The Life & Times of Icehttps://iceturtlegirl.blog
A blog about life and the many things we do in it
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 02:47:02 +0000 en-US
hourly
1 https://i1.wp.com/iceturtlegirl.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/cropped-cropped-14520357_315922462114765_4235065056201500847_n.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1The Life & Times of Icehttps://iceturtlegirl.blog
323267213700Rooted In Community Takes Chicago: 2019 Winter Leadership Retreathttps://iceturtlegirl.blog/2019/02/21/rooted-in-community-takes-chicago-2019-winter-leadership-retreat/
https://iceturtlegirl.blog/2019/02/21/rooted-in-community-takes-chicago-2019-winter-leadership-retreat/#respondThu, 21 Feb 2019 21:58:27 +0000https://iceturtlegirl.blog/?p=29822

Rooted In Community (RIC) had their leadership team retreat this weekend in Chicago, Illinois. Hosted by Sam Vergara who works for Windy City Harvest who is an organization that is apart of the Chicago Botanical Gardens. My journey started Friday morning February 15th, 2019 as I left DC for Chicago. Once I got to O’Hare I was there for a few hours as I waited the arrival of my sister Bevelyn who was coming from North Carolina who works for the Food Youth Initiative. Once she arrived we made our way over to our Air B & B were we met Sam’s friend Charlie who told us he was having a Grandfather aka Peyote ceremony this weekend as well. After he showed us around the house Bev and I ordered some food and then watched little kids try food from all over the world on YouTube. Sam came over a few hours later and brought vegan quesadilla & we had hot toddies and caught up with everyone. Around 8 our brother’s Wade from Grub in Olympia & Travis from New Mexico arrived. Once our sister Irene from Food What in Santa Cruz, CA got picked up by Sam’s wife Laura they came by and then left to go to Sam’s house were Travis & Irene were staying. A lot later that night our brother Noah who will be working at Soul Fire Firm come May and John & Keely who work for the Food Project arrived.

The next day those at the Air B & B walked over to the Farm on Ogden which is one of the locations of the Windy City Harvest Farms. Sam gave us a tour of the farm which was so dope! It had aquaponics, a green house, a produce stand, and beautiful commercial kitchen and so much good produce like aloe, basil, greens and much more.

After our tour we traveled in a 15 passenger van over to the community college were we did our day one envisioning happened. We ate vegan tamales for breakfast & then started our day. Myself and Irene did an opening ceremony were we gave thanks to the Indigenous ancestors of the Potawatomi & the Chippewa & the ancestors of those who migrated to this land. We then passed around some sage, palo santo & incense while we each went around & called out our ancestors and what we wanted to get out of this weekend. After breakfast & our opening ceremony we went straight into our work for the day. First on deck was our budget and financing were we talked about numbers, grants and such with Keely & Ari from Philly. Next after that was getting to know each other more and our time commitments we can allow to RIC with Noah & Wade. We each got 5 mins to go around & tell our work styles, a little about our personal life and our jobs. Each got more elaborate and beautiful and we even told our signs to do our charts with.

Lunch came next as we ordered in from a Puerto Rican place which was really good. After lunch came a very helpful talk on decision-making strategies. We learned about different kinds of decision-making like anarchy, consensus, democratic, presidential or monarchy, military, and representative. Through out RIC we have used many different ways of making decisions from representative to consensus and even a little bit of anarchy sometimes. Through this conversation we were able to find a way that works with everyone to be able to make a decision for how we choose things like how we add new people onto the team or choose a location for our summer summits. We chose a 1, 2, 3 model of 1 being a definite yes, 2 being I might need clarification or have questions & I don’t want to blog it, and 3 being a no I am blocking it.

Once we were done with the conversation we cleaned up the space and left to go back to the Botanical Gardens before some of us went back to the Air B & B and some of us went shopping. While shopping was happening we ordered Deep Dish Pizza and had some after people got back. This was my first piece of Deep Dish and it was pretty good. I won’t say it’s my new favorite pizza but it’s pretty great.

Sunday we all made our way back over to the Botanical Gardens and had some Congee a RIC staple for breakfast. After congee was had we did a quick opening energizer were everyone went around a said what they got out of Saturday and what they wanted to get out of today and then do a quick dance which was fun. To start we went over some platform usage and what platforms work best for us. We learned about Team Drive & Asana a web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. I am actually really happy we will be using this platform to organize our tasks so we know when people are done with each task.

After that we got into the meat and potatoes of the weekend and talked about the RIC regional model. We started with Irene from Food What?! in Santa Cruz, CA who has participated in a regional gathering of Bay Area organizations who hosted by Pie Ranch. Alameda Point Collective is taking on the regional gathering this year as Pie Ranch has been doing this for so long & need a hosting break. They will hosting it this year on July 12th. We thought about how to incorporate RIC’s identity into our regional gatherings. So we split up into different groups and talked about RIC as larger entity and RIC from a regional view-point. Some great conversations were had by both groups and we came up with talk around membership, youth and regional members of the leadership team. This led to what the regional gatherings would look like and working with groups on the ground working on issues related to food and farming like water issues, housing, violence, ect. all with a focus on youth. After a lot of great conversation we stopped for lunch/dinner and cooked the first meal in the Botanical Gardens new commercial kitchen. We made scallion pancakes which I was apart of cooking and they were delicious and pretty easy to make. We also had soup, noodles & salad with fresh greens from the garden on site. Lunch was a lot of fun to make and turned out amazing.

Once our bellies were full we went back into our work. That was when Beatriz Beckford too us all to school and told us about how we were over thinking the regional model a little and that it didn’t have to be so nitty-gritty but let RIC be its own thing that the people have control over how they use it. That regions don’t have to have a big gathering to match the national summits but could be as easy and simple as a picnic together. B, Travis and myself expressed how going to a every other year model for the national gatherings would leave a void in our summers. We know that is peak time for most groups to have their youth on site so with the regional model it feels like we want to fill that with some type of gathering. But for us to not feel we have to duplicate the national summit at a regional level. Which I think took a lot of pressure off a lot of people. We then went over our roles in our containers and then did our closing ceremony. For our closing Travis had us in a circle as we lit some palo santo and said what they got out of this weekend and what they love about RIC. While we were doing our ceremony I was drumming while Travis played his flutes and Irene shook a shaker. When I was drumming something just came out of me and I started to dance in place while we were playing. It was beautiful. We cleaned up before leaving and then headed on over to Sam’s place to chill before we left.

Sam’s house which he just bought with his beautiful wife Laura was amazing. He has a beautiful three-tier altar to this living & dead ancestors as well as anime, manga, comic and cartoons everywhere. It was very cute and very Sam and I loved it. We all chilled at his house for a few hours sharing seeds, stories, drinks & ganja. Even Irene, Bevelyn & myself helped to do an awesome little blessing for his new house and said some prayers for protection and good vibes in the house. After a while of hanging out John, Noah, Keely & myself said our goodbyes and made our way back to the Air B & B were John and myself had some left over deep dish and then went to bed. The next morning we all got ready to leave Chicago and went our separate ways.

This RIC retreat was a lot of fun and it was great being in Chicago for the first time. Some highlights for me would be being with everyone as we don’t get to see each other much during the year outside of our gatherings. I also loved learning about decision-making processes that I can also use in my everyday life. Oh and of course the food was amazing! From the vegan quesadilla to the tamales, deep dish and making scallion pancakes. Also just strengthening my love for RIC and the youth we serve.

What I Wrote on Instagram:

#cyntoiabrown is being let free August 7th! This is amazing! More people need to make sure things like this don’t happen again! This what we need to see more of not what we have been seeing the last few days around this conversation. And yes I know this conversation has been hard but it is very important due to the reactions I am seeing around #rkelly At the end of the day black girls should be protected at all cost & we need to know how to protect ourselves because there won’t always be someone there to protect us. I think about my black niece & little cousins and this could have been them so this is of big importance to me. Also I just want all black girls to know your worth, your importance and that you matter more than any man! I am sending all black girls, boys, women so much love & light! As a world we need to do better by our children & our women stop stealing their light!

I grew up a black & indigenous women in the suburbs of Virginia. I have grew up in a two parent household as 1 of 5. Although not in an overt way I still was always told to look over my shoulder when I walked down the street. I also grew up in the AIM and MySpace era but I never had one. I had my first cell phone which was a pink razor at 15 which you couldn’t even go on the internet very well and opened a Facebook page at 17. I got my first iPhone at 20.

I am not saying any of this to make anyone feel bad about the way they grew up. Because I was the youngest child in my family with 4 older siblings and I was watched over a lot. My mom wouldn’t let me have a MySpace or AIM and due to financial reasons my parents didn’t have the money to buy me an iPhone at the time so I got a razor. Due to all of this plus my mom making me watch the Oprah specials on pedophilia and sexual predators and how to spot them at 12 years old I was very protected. I carried around pepper spray when I had to come home from working in DC and it be dark outside riding the metro and bus in my early 20s. When my older sister was younger there was this dude on our block who was flashing girls.

Why am I bringing any of this up? Due to the conversations I have been seeing around this issue of pedophilia and sex trafficking in the past week. Last week Lifetime aired a six part docu-series called Surviving R.Kelly. The docu-series shared interviews and first hand accounts from women (who were young girls at the time), their parents & family members, people who have worked with him and others who are apart of the industry who work with, were around him or just the culture of R.Kelly. I didn’t personally watch this docu-series for personal reasons but I absolutely believe every accusation of every accuser who has come forward now or ever.

So after the docu-series a lot of people have had a lot of things to say. The culture has been split 50/50. You have the rationale side of the culture who are acting as the adults we should be and have stopped following R.Kelly, listening to him and defending him. But then you have the other part of the culture who either still is listening to the music, still supporting him, blaming the young girls because they’re “fast or they asked for it” not holding the adult in the situation accountable for their actions. Even now a lot of people are learning that R.Kelly and his brother were molested as kids and using that as a reason to defend him. Then you have someone like Chance the Rapper who spoke from his heart no matter how you feel about it saying that as a black society we are programmed to care more about black male pain then black female pain especially when they are dark skin. Oh and then it came out that there where a bunch of celebs were asked to be apart of this doc who declined who have either worked with R.Kelly, supported R.Kelly or just admire his “genius”. Oh and shout out to John Legend who came forward bravely to come against R.Kelly because someone in the industry has too! All of this just shows us that for over 30 years we never took the stories of these young dark skin black girls seriously and we ALL helped to keep this man famous, employed and not in jail.

Cyntoia Brown who killed a man at 16 she was sex trafficked to who she thought was going to kill her who was sentenced to a life sentence as an adult was granted clemency this August 7th. This brings this to light in the mainstream public of the young girls who get trapped in these sex trafficking situations.

Also there have been some videos and interviews of Drake who has been hanging out with young girls. One video that just surfaced is of Drake at a concert fondling a young girl kissing all over her and touching her breast before asking her how old she was and she said 17 before saying “why do you look that way?” “why you so thick?”. Then there is him and that model he was “hanging with” as far back as when she was 16. Oh and of course the Millie Bobby Brown thing. She is the actress from Stranger Things and she is only like 14 and Drake is in his 30s and apparently people are cool with their relationship because it’s “cute”. He text her dating advice and who knows what else which is weird.

But it’s not just R.Kelly or Drake (not putting him in the same category) it’s literally so many celebs and regular people too. And sadly it’s in families, neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, Hollyweird and so many other places. We have to do a better job in protecting our young girls and boys. And not just in this country but all over the world. I mean in different Asian countries, India and Africa there is a high percentage of sex trafficking. In India and Africa they think it’s ok to have child brides and to sleep with young children to make sure you don’t get HIV/AIDs. In Mexico and many other latin American countries along with drug trafficking there is also big sex trafficking rings. And this is throughout history in almost all countries around the world. Why do people think it is ok to have sex with young little helpless girls and boys? Why I honestly don’t get it.

But I will say black little girls and boys are the most trafficked people in this country and the world because no one really cares about them. Also what is very interesting to me is the fact that dark skin black women are still defending R.Kelly. The same color and gender of the little girls he is with to this day! It’s one thing when men defend (not that it’s right that could be their mom, aunt, cousin, niece, sister, ect) him because they just don’t care about women in general but when dark skin black women can’t even stand up for these girls who look like you then I just don’t know. *smh*

All of this to say:

WE AS A SOCIETY NEED TO CARE MORE ABOUT OUR YOUNG CHILDREN AND WOMEN!!!

Albums/EPs:

Kacey Musgrave- Golden Hour:

Golden Hour by Kacey Musgrave is that album. It’s a country album yes but you won’t know it at first listen. It’s got that great country story telling as well as those country guitars but it also has some beautiful lyrics and even some ‘70s vibes on some songs. High Horse, Slow Burn, Butterflies, Lonely Weekend, Space Cowboy & Wonder Women are all such different songs but they all tie together so well. As a newer country artist of the 2010s Kacey stands out for trying new things both musically & lyric wise which I think any person could get into country fan or not.

Princess Nokia- 1992 (Deluxe):

Favorite Tracks:

Brujas, Excellent, Goth Kid, Saggy Denim, Mine

I think I found out about her like I find out about everyone else these days through the Internet. I think I heard her name through the grape-vine and then saw her interview with Brown University and loved they way she spoke and what she spoke about. In the interview she talked about her spirituality, urban feminism, loving pop-punk and being the weird kid in school. There was something about this that I could relate to and I was able to find that in her music as well. The way she talks about being a emo/goth/raver kid who makes hip-hop music I love it. I also love the way she talks about her spiritual background being Taino and black. She says she grew up going to pow-wows and being very connected to her Native American roots. She also owns being a young, brown, queer women from the Bronx.

Twenty One Pilots- Trench:

Florance + the Machine- High As Hope:

Favorite Tracks:

Grace, Hunger, 100 Years, The End of Love, No Choir, Big God, Patricia

This Florence + the Machine album High As Hope is incredibly beautiful like all of them are! Grace, Hunger, 100 Years, The End of Love, No Choir, Big God & Patricia alone are so big and grand and just Florence’s voice alone is aww inspiring with of course the instrumentation of the Machine which is amazing! Been one of my favorite groups since senior year of high school when I first discovered them and of course Florence Welsh style is fly!

Xiuhtezcatl- Brake Free:

On October 5th, Xiuhtezcatl came out with his debut album Break Free & it is a bop! Previously he blessed us with some music on his EP Broken and then dropped a few more tracks on Break Free. Xiuhtezcatl to me is what I wish I could have been at his age. I feel I had the mind-set but didn’t fully act upon it then. He has been putting in work for the climate since he was 5 years old as apart of Earth Guardians. He is indigenous and he honors that to the fullest and I love it. He is a great voice for his generation and really holds the youth voice high which is very important in these crazy times. His music is really talking to the youth but also talking to adults who can’t get with the program and just do their part to help make the youth’s future better. He talks about mental health and the pressures of the youth growing up today on one track. He also talks about his indigenous culture & how he grew up. And of course he talks about the revolution a lot which I am all about.

J-Cole- KOD:

Favorite Tracks:

Motiv8, Brackets, Once an Addict, Friends, ATM

J. Cole has been one of my favorite rappers of the 2010s since 2011. Each one of his albums has just gotten better and better over time starting with 2014 Forest Hill’s Drive. This year on 4/20 Cole dropped his surprise album KOD and it was amazing. He talks a lot about modern mainstream hip-hop and trying to bring a message to the youth. He talks about the pit falls of drugs and depression and teaches us a new way of dealing with those challenges like meditation and self-love. He made a fire song about motivation which is my morning song before work. The ATM video was so good and brought me back to the videos of Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes. Then of course there is the song brackets which teaches us about money and taxes and the way the government just takes your money and doesn’t let us decide where it goes. Over all another great album from Cole.

Janelle Monae- Dirty Computer:

Favorite Tracks:

Django Jane, Make Me Feel, Pynk, I Like That, I Got the Juice

Janelle Monae is one of my top three favorite artist of all time. When she first put out her first singles from the album Django Jane and Make Me Feel I was hooked of course. Every time Janelle puts out a new album I just get so excited. I haven’t been this happy for an artist in a long time and I’m just so happy for Janelle and what she is bringing to music. In this album she talks about black female power, queer power and coming up and becoming better than what the haters thought you’d be. She get political on some tracks and she just giving hope to those going through the struggle.

Lenny Kravitz- Raise Vibration:

Leon Bridges- Good Thing:

Favorite Tracks:

Shy, If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be), You Don’t Know

Looking for some funky soul for your playlist then check out Leon Bridges. I have checked out Leon Bridges in the past but this album fully sucked me in. Songs like Shy which is basically my anthem as I am a very shy person with all relationships in my life, If It Feels Good is a funky soul groove that just feels like a throwback but with a modern twist and You Don’t Know this album just keeps the bops coming. Great album for those looking for a modern twist on that old soul and funk sound.

Santigold- I Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions:

Favorite Tracks:

Run the Road, Wha’ You Feel Like, Why Me, Don’t Blame Me

I love Santigold. With this album she made me want to dance with this album full of dub, dance hall and reggae vibes. This album goes and it would be a great album for any party to just get down.

Phony Ppl- moza-ik:

Favorite Tracks:

Before You Get A Boyfriend, Move Her Mind, the Colours, on everything iii Love

I discovered Phony Ppl in 2015 off the recommendation of the group The Internet. The fell in love with this group and what they brought to music with their mix of a live band, R&B and rapping. They are a unique group of boys whose music is very atmospheric but also really fun with a message. Check out Before You Get A Boyfriend which is a lot of fun, Move Her Mind which about wanting a girl who can not only get down but stimulate your mind as well and the Colours which reminded me of all the good things about fall. Great fallow up to their album Yesterday’s Tomorrow.

Mariah Carey- Caution:

Favorite Tracks:

GTFO, A No No, Giving Me Life, Caution

This album actually surprised me. I haven’t listened to a Mariah album in a while but I love it. She brought it right out the gate with GTFO which I was here for and then I just randomly decided to listen to the album on Friday night and was surprised at how Mariah still got. A No No is more of a throwback with the lil Kim Biggie sample and then Giving Me Life has the legend on it Slick Rick which works so well with Mariah’s style. Great come back queen.

Supaman- Illuminatives:

I discovered this rapper on Facebook one day when one of his tracks went viral of a performance of his Prayer Loop Song. It was dope to see him dressed in his full regalia and just giving us some hip-hop beats with a native flute. Then this year he came out with his full album and it has been on repeat all year. From the song Miracles ft. MuMu Fresh to the Talkboy Roundy, Truth Interlude and more this is a really great album that brings a lot of truth to power.

Young the Giant- Mirror Master:

One of their darker in tone albums then their previous ones. There lyrics are a lot more melancholy and their instrumentation is dark and they only have about two or three songs on the album that are really upbeat and happy. They didn’t go in too crazy a direction this time and mixed that indie/alt-rock vibe they always do with darker lyrics. They talk about the world around us in some songs as well as some songs about mental health & those feelings off loneliness, isolation and anxiety. Gives me very much Twenty One Pilots lyric wise in a few songs mixed with that Young the Giant sound. Over all not a bad album by any means but I think it is going to take me listening more to this album way more for me to really get into it because right now I only liked 5/12 songs and that is pretty low for me. Anyway check out the album it’s a good bop.

Willow Smith- 1st:

Kids See Ghost- Kids See Ghost:

Favorite Tracks:

Kids See Ghost, Reborn, Feel the Love

Wasn’t going to listen to this album due to the fact that it was a Kid Cudi ft. Kanye West collab and I was in a war with Kanye like most people over most things he has said this year. But I eventually decided to listen to it in support of the one and only Mr. Kid Cudi. Cudi does he’s thing on this album and although it’s only a few tracks it’s still great to see Kid Cudi doing so well after his emotional 2016-’17. The tidal track Kids See Ghost, Reborn and Feel the Love are all amazing tracks even if I choose to skip the Kayne parts. Cudi is a real staple in music with his introspective lyrics. Reborn had that hopeful vibe to it and with Cudi singing it it gives us hope that things are on the up and up for the rapper. Feel the Love is an ode to loving yourself and the love you receive from others which always important to remember to give praise to. Over all not a bad project and I will always love Kid Cudi.

Songs:

Finesse (Remix)- Bruno Mars ft. Cardi-B:

Bruno Mars and Cardi B have both had incredible 2018s so far. For Bruno he won a boat load of Grammy’s including Album of the Year and Cardi B dropped her much-anticipated debut album and is having a baby. Now say what you will about either artist (depending on if you like them) you can’t deny when Bruno dropped the visuals for Finesse and remixed it adding a little Cardi B verse it was fire. It almost broke the internet the day it dropped due to its throwback ’90s sound and the video being an ode to In Living Color recreating the stage and everything. Most people liked the video and song but of course some didn’t but for me I am obsessed with anything related to the ’90s at all so I enjoyed it plus although I am not really a Cardi B fan I do like Bruno and Cardi wasn’t that bad on the track. Great listen if you like that New Jack Swing sound from the ’90s.

The Last of the Real Ones- Fall Out Boy:

Over Again- Mike Shinoda:

In early 2018, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Fort Minor came out with a 3 track EP entitled Postromatic. This EP basically goes through how it feels to lose someone super close to you. For Mike it was the lead singer of his band and his best friend/brother Chester Bennington who committed suaside last summer. It had not been an easy 6 months for him or the band and Mike put his whole raw and real self into this EP. He just let it all out in a way that was tangible for him but also helped a lot of fans still going through it feel a little better too. Also with these songs came three music videos Mike filmed himself on his iPhone and are so real with no big production.

Over Again might be my favorite song on the EP. “Sometimes you don’t say goodbye once you say goodbye over and over and over again” Mike details the night of the Hollywood bowl that him and the band put on in tribute to Chester with the fans. He talks about how he thought about cancelling the show and how hard he thought it be to get back up on stage and sing a song and then remember that his is gone. I also love the beat for this song in true LP and even Fort Minor fashion with the electronics in the background. He also talks about trying really hard to get some closer but it just keeps coming back to you and hitting you in the face for a while.

All the Stars- Kendrick Lamar ft. SZA:

As we all know Black Panther has been just a world-wide phenomenon over the past few months since it came out. And the soundtrack is not bad either. Now if your into trap type music then you’ll love this album and for me I’m not necessarily into that but I do like a few songs on the album. First I like the song with Kendrick Lamar & SZA for All The Stars. I love the video even though it is stolen art but that’s another story. The way they bring I beauty of Africa and black women especially being the center of it all it so awesome. SZA sounds great and Kendrick of course is Kendrick. Great track!

Flower of the Universe- Sade:

The Queen is Back! Sade came back for a one-off song this year on the A Wrinkle in Time Soundtrack. Ava Duverney came through when she asked Sade to be apart of the soundtrack and Sade did it. The song is called Flowers of the Universe and as always Sade delivers. It’s one of her more belt/lullaby type songs with the slow backing vocals and instrumentals. It such a beautiful song perfect for falling asleep to. So glad she is back and even in her 50s Sade still sounds amazing and I’m waiting for a new album *hint hint*

Nineteen- Hayley Williams:

This cover of the Tegan and Sara song Nineteen by Hayley Williams is so beautiful! I already love Hayley’s voice and the way this song is so quiet with the acoustic guitar and Hayley’s voice it just is everything. It comes from an album in 2017 that is a bunch of covers of Tegan and Sara from their album The Con. I love Tegan and Sara and I love Hayley Williams and I love that they’re friends.

Can’t Deny Me- Pearl Jam:

Pearl Jam is one of my favorite bands of all time so of course I have been waiting for them to drop a new song since their 2012 album Lighting Bolt. Can’t Deny Me is a song perfect for the times we are living in. Ever since Pearl Jam was so vocal back in the ’90s and early 2000s about politics and social justice I was waiting for them to come back with a track for our post 45 world. It is a nice Pearl Jam song that was a nice surprise for the fans who have been waiting for a new one.

Nice for What- Drake:

Not a bad song but that’s because of the Lauryn Hill sample & Big Freedia beat. Still not a Drake fan like that but every now and again I might like one.

Brown Eyed Lover-Allen Stone:

I love Allen Stone. He is what you would call “blue-eyed soul” and I love it. This song has been stuck in my head all year and I’m glad. He has a voice like butter and is just so incredible. Check him out he is amazing.

I Need A Women to Love- Kesha:

If you had told me in 2010 that I would have liked Kesha or her music I would have thought you were crazy but honestly I really like her and her music since the release of her album Rainbow last year. I love her pop, rock and country vibes that she is bringing to the forefront in her music more. This song is no different and I love this cover she did and the video is great too. In the video Kesha officiates a same-sex wedding which she has been a big propitiate of forever and I love it. I also love Kesha’s style these days which is very boho and ’70s inspired. I just love the vibe of Kesha being a lot more happy and positive in her music these days.

no tears left to cry, God is A Women & thank you, next- Ariana Grande:

To say this was Ariana’s year would be an understatement. She was everywhere this year and it was great. After a rough 2017 and an even rougher 2018 she could have just givin up. But Ariana is a true queen who was like ok this is what you’re giving me I’ll just flip it to make it amazing and that is what she did. From her album sweetener to her 1st number one single with Thank you, Next it has just been a world wind for her. From the first time I ever heard no tears left to cry I was shook and then God Is A Women was a bop. Her voice and music has always been something I’ve admired over the years and I am very proud of the year Ariana has had.

This is America- Childish Gambino:

Self Explanatory at this point. Music video is way better than the song but it’s all great. (and yes I know he is anti-black women in a lot of ways but it’s so hard to be perfect with trying to be so “socially conscious” about everything so if I like a song or Artist I just do. There are bigger things to care about.)

Give Yourself A Try- The 1975:

Great single from The 1975. Give Yourself A Try is such a positive mind-set that I am learning more and more to do for myself everyday.

Come Through & Chill- Miguel ft. J-Cole:

Another chill song from Miguel and his partner J-Cole. This song is about a women coming over for a late night chill sesh with weed and sex. You gotta come through and chill. I love the vibes of this song. I also love Cole’s verse which always brings that “woke” energy. Great jam.

Halo- Boston Manor:

Haven’t listened to a lot of modern pop-punk music in a while but when I was recommend this song by Youtube I was hooked. I love the lead singers voice when he sings Halo in the hook and I love just the rocking vibes on the track. I plan to get into their album that came out this year more and yea this band is killer.

Fallen- Jaden Smith:

I love Jaden Smith. I discovered this song back on the Youtubes back in 2016 way before the album came out. I love this song it’s such a vibey jam. I love his sing rapping as he is talking to a girl he is with. The music video is a great too it’s so atmospheric and I’m here for it. Jaden Smith is honestly an inspiration to my life as his sister is and I’m just glad he is getting bigger with his music.

Icon? (SYRE Electric Album)- Jaden Smith:

Love Icon. Love Icon? Electric. I love the social commentary at the end of it too that basically is an ode to the youth and that the world is in their hands. Beautiful!

Like Sugar- Chaka Khan:

So Funky. So ’70s. So Chaka Khan. Our legends still got it.

Lake Effect Kid- Fall Out Boy:

Fall Out Boy’s best song of 2018 (which is saying something). This takes us back to not pre-2013 FOB but definitely before the tragedy that was Mania. Check it out if your like me and miss “old” FOB.

Cornflake Girl (Florance + the Machine Cover):

Great cover from my fav Florence. She really gives her all with the song and it fits her voice so well.

Made for Now- Janet Jackson ft. Daddy Yankee:

Janet still got it and 2018 Janet got all the flowers. Get it Janet!

Yeah Yeah- Jaden Smith:

My favorite song off his The Sunset Tapes: A Cool Tape Story. It’s got this island vibe to and is very sing rapping. He is taking to a girl again who he loves which is the whole theme of the project is an ode to women which I love. Keep going forward bro you’re doing your thing.

Early February- Nahko:

My favorite song off of My Name is Bear that came out back in 2017. It has some talk box at the beginning, end and during the hook. It is such a fun song with the instrumentation and everything with the lyrics basically celebrating Nahko’s life and how he was born and his birthday which is in early February. He talks about that even though he was born out of tragedy he is out living his purpose and it is beautiful.

Be A Star 2 (from Life Size 2)- Tyra Banks ft. New Fear’s Eve:

Be A Star Iconic. Be A Star 2 Tyra Rapping. Iconic x 2.

Are You That Somebody- Unified Highway:

Found this reggae sounding cover of Aaliyah’s iconic song Are You That Somebody and it doesn’t disappoint which is amazing. I love how it takes what is great about the original and makes it unique to this track with the dub and reggae sounds.

Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea- Fall Out Boy:

Wakanda- Ludwig Goransson:

Love the black panther soundtrack and score. So beautiful.

2 Worlds- SouFy ft. Tall Paul:

Great indigenous hip-hop artist Soufy out of Detroit ft. Tall Paul another Native artist. This album came out in 2017 but is still on repeat as the beat goes, his rhymes are so good and tell a great story of living in the city and dealing with the daily life of that but also being true to your Native culture. It’s such a great song and the project is amazing to please check out Soufy.

Sky Walker- Miguel ft. Travis Scott:

Miguel always brings the fun but chill R&B flavor in his songs and I love it. This song is about weed and also Star Wars and is just a fun leaded back song that everyone should be checking out.

Never Bring Me Down- Maimouna Youssef:

Maimouna had a huge 2018. From her Tiny Desk performances to her sold out show at the Kennedy Center to being on Sway in the Morning. She had an incredible year and this song is really where it all started. In 2017 Mumu Fresh put out her Vintage Babies album and its just the best. Never Bring Me Down is that song too that helped to make 2018 her year. She talked about women, people of color and the connection between women and men and the unequal treatment of women it’s beautiful! Check her out she is only going up from here.

When The Curtain Falls- Greta Van Fleet:

This song just kind of fell in my lap this year and I’m glad it did. Not a bad group at all and I think they are really going places despite what people say. I really like this song and hope to check out more of them in 2019.

Come Over- The Internet:

I love the Internet and I loved their album this year. This was their first single from the album this year and it was amazing in typical Internet fashion. The video was also great and colorful and wonderful.

Promises- Aly & Aj:

In 2017 Aly & Aj put out and album called Ten Year because it had been 10 years since they put out their last record. Promises is a great bop from that record and you should be checking out Aly & Aj in 2018 cause their awesome.

Guardian Angel (Supa Dups Remix)- Allen Stone ft. Jacob Hemphill:

A song that came out in 2015. This remix with Jacob Hemphill of SOJA is the best! Their messages are so similar that it worked really well.

Look Up Kid- Princess Nokia:

Honestly a song I definitely needed this year. I love Princess Nokia for being a brown women who likes pop-punk & emo music but is also a MC. There aren’t that many out there to represent POCs let alone women in this genera. I know I was into this back in middle school/high school (still am just not as heavy) but all the music I liked mostly came from white males except Hayley Williams & a few other females. We definitely need more brown & black females making music like this cause representation matters.

Garden (Say It Like Dat)- SZA:

Haven’t fully gotten into SZA yet but I love this song. It’s such a vibe and a bop it makes me happy. The lyrics are so real and I love that about SZA she keeps it real.

Classic Songs/Albums:

Nite And Day- Al B. Sure!:

Classic R&B. Guys with uni-brows make the best music. Smooth vocals, the beat goes it’s just great.

Bag Lady- Erykah Badu:

Ok I love Erykah Badu and what she brings to music. This song I know is about a relationship with the metaphor of being a bag lady as emotional bags but I always look at it as a lady with physical bags and how she can’t catch the bus because of it. The beat is amazing Erykah’s singing is the best. Truly a classic track.

93′ Till Infinity- Souls of Mischief:

That beat though. Classic West Coast track repping the Bay Area. The smooth rhyming of the Mighty Souls of Mischief is everything and this track is just so laid back it just makes me happy every time it comes on. Great to smoke to or for just chillin with your homies.

For The Love of You, Pts. 1 & 2- The Isley Brothers:

This song is definitely in the running for one of my favorite songs of all time. From the instrumental to Ron Isley’s singing this song is a funky soul bop. It’s got all the ’70s elements I love and it’s just a timeless track.

London Beckoned Songs About Money- Panic! At the Disco:

Growing up when I went through my pop-punk/emo phase I was never a huge Panic! fan but did listen to the singles. So this year when Princess Nokia who is a big pop-punk head introduced this track to me during her Apple Music show “Voices In My Head” I was into it. Glad I discovered this track even if I am a little late.

Wishing Well: Terence Trent D’Arby:

This song came out in the ’80s and until this year I really knew nothing about this song except that it was a bop. My brother-in-law who is obsessed with the ’80s always played this song growing up and it just became a staple in my music library. This year it really was stuck in my head and I later found out that Terence Trent D’Arby could have had a fire career like Prince, Michael or Lenny Kravitz but due to being too big-headed he messed up that chance. Sad but this first album was a bop even if he now lives a totally different life style.

Something In the Way- Nirvana:

This track off Nevermind has just been stuck in my head all year and I’m not mad at it. Honestly one of my top music generas is Grunge so it makes sense especially since at least a few Grunge songs go into rotation for me every few weeks.

Fly Girl- Queen Latifah:

All Hail the Queen! This comes off Latifah’s second studio album and is an anthem for the woman. It talks about all the men who try to come up to you at a club or party and compliment you to try to get you to go home with them. But Queen is not here for it and reminds those men she is not so easy and that no amount of money or praise can make her like you plus she doesn’t even know you. One lyrics even goes “(I love you) you must be mad” meaning why are you saying you love me knowing well and good we literally just met. Great song for all the girls who don’t play that but still know that your fly.

Master Blaster (Jammin’)- Stevie Wonder:

Such a funky ’70s jam! Love me some Stevie Wonder he is always in style and is always stuck in my head and this time it’s Master Blaster (Jammin’) cause I hear it at work so much and it just goes.

People In the Middle- Michael Franti & Spearhead:

Michael Franti & Spearhead is a new discovery for me over the past few years. I know he has been around for like ever but I came across him in 2015 and was hooked ever sence. He makes the most inspirational music about love, peace and the human spirit. This song is just so funky & fun. It’s got a reggae vibe to it with a funky beat and I just love it.

Cornflake Girl- Tori Amos:

So I never got into Tori Amos before this year and I only got into it due to a Netflix show were the main characters loved her. The main song they were really into was Cornflake Girl. It’s so good. It’s a very folky song and Tori’s voice is great.

If You Can’t Say No- Lenny Kravitz:

A track off Lenny’s album 5 and it’s just so good. The beat goes, Lenny’s voice is everything and it definitely was on repeat for SO long.

Lenny Kravitz- Let Love Rule (Album):

Probably my favorite album of Lenny’s besides 5. It is his debut album and it is basically everything I believe in and feel. Let Love Rule was recored during a very special time in Lenny Kravitz’s life. He was dating and then married to the love of his life and soul mate actress and fellow neo-hippie Lisa Bonet. He would also welcome a beautiful baby girl into his life named Zoe. Everything was perfect for the retro rocker and he put a lot of that into this record a record bent on bringing awareness to the way the world really is while spreading a message of love. From the title track Let Love Rule, Flower Child, Mr. Cab Driver and Freedom Train are all tracks about love, freedom and care all things I care about deeply. I Built This Garden for Us & Does Anybody Out Here Even Care are both songs of liberation but also the caring of the planet and the people. I love this album so much it definitely is a timeless album with such power.

Cree Summer- Street Faerie (Album):

This album might be my favorite album all year. Yes this album did come out in 1999 but as I just got into this album this year outside of a few songs from it I was floored! Cree Summer is the best and I love her in everything she has done including her music. I love her folk and earthy organic vibes in this album. She talks about a lot of topics dealing with women, people of color, Native folks, love, anger and so much more. She has a song for a women’s moon time, sisterhood and love. She has a track with Lenny Kravitz called Mean Sleep who helped to produce this album with her which is such a beautiful duet. A song called Curious White Boy about a white boy who dates a girl of color just for the experience but won’t let them meet his family. A song called Soul Sister about her love of her sister friend which in this case she is talking about Lisa Bonet who sings backing vocals on the hook. Smooth My Heart, Fall & Naho being a few of my favorite tracks on the album and yea this album is just incredible. It’s alternative black girl at its finest and I love it so much.

Today’s post is going to be dedicated to the incredible women that is Hayley Williams of Paramore. Ever since the first time I saw a Paramore video back in 2007 I was hooked on Hayley Williams and her vibrant personality. I loved the way she dressed and would try to duplicate her style all through high-school and my early 20s (but failed). The way she was so confident in her musical ability when it came to her voice and stage present & just her relatebility in the lyrical department was so inspiring. Fast forward 11 years and my love for Hayley is just as strong if not stronger and here are a few reason why she is considered to be everyone’s best friend in my opinion.

She Is Just Like Us Going Through It:

Hayley Williams has always worn her heart on her sleeve. Wither through her lyrics or interviews she would do she always talked about the hard times she was going through at the time. Hayley like many of her fans deals with anxiety and depression to a degree. She has been very open about this journey of trying to become happy again after a really bad amount of depression before the release of Paramore’s 2017 album After Laughter. She has talked in interviews that she was just in a dark place for a lot of 2015-16 and feels After Laughter has been able to help her through this time. She has also been very supportive of other people going through mental health issues as well and advocated for those going through this struggle to get help and is very happy when they can use her music to help them get through something like this.

http://www.papermag.com/hayley-williams-op-ed-2573595188.html

Her Music Taste is Eclectic:

Hayley has said on different occasions that growing up she listened to a lot of different genres of music. She would listen to everything from R&B/soul, rock, punk & funk. She was in a funk band with some of the members of Paramore before they official became the band we would come to know. Growing up in Mississippi before moving to Franklin, TN she would listen to the R&B/soul stations on the radio and she loved artist like Etta James, Chaka Khan, Motown artist, Average White Band, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Huston, Aaliyah, Bone Thugs & Harmony, Dr. Dre, Eminem, 112, Destiny’s Child & TLC among others. She has worked with artist like the rapper B.O.B on his debut album and her voice really complimented the track. She also loves late ’90s pop groups like N’SYNC & the Spice Girls and is obsessed with the movie Spice World. And of course there is that rock & punk music that influenced early Paramore like her favorite band of all time MeWithoutYou, No Doubt, Blondie, New Found Glory, Green Day, the Ramones, Jimmy Eats World, and many other bands. For me I loved that she was able to be in a pop-rock/pop punk band yet listen to so much eclectic music that most people wouldn’t think she would like. I grew up listening to a lot of eclectic music myself and always love people who I look up to that listen to many different generes as well. It keeps it interesting.

Her Fans Mean Everything To Her:

Literally one of the most compassionate people in the industry I think. She is always looking out for her fans and friends when they need her. We don’t call this the Parafamily for no reason. Now I’ve never been to a Paramore show as of this post but from what I’ve seen online Hayley & the whole band really pay attention to what is going on in the audience & if someone is hurt or trying to get their attention they are on it. Her fans mean everything to her and I’ve even seen her defend them on social media. She highlights them and just has this incredible connection with us in the best way.

She is Accessible:

So not all celebrities are accessible on the internet but Hayley is always around (unless she takes internet brakes). I always see her on twitter or Instagram just being a normal millionals (I think she counts as a millionals all though I don’t know the age range) posting funny memes, pics and videos especially of her dog. She also post the cutest pictures of herself and I am always living for it and it always makes me so much happier every time I see that she is on.

Her Lyrics Are So Relatable:

As a girl growing up there are a few people you can go to for advice or you feel might understand what you are going through in your life at the time. For most girls those people are your mom, a best friend or a sibling. For some of us we might not have that and even if we do there might be that artist with those really relatable lyrics that can get you through a situation differently then your family and friends. For me that artist was Hayley Williams of Paramore. She has always had the most relatable lyrics that I’ve always felt that as a fellow female I could relate to what she was saying wither about boys, growing up & becoming an adult, anxiety/depression, women issues and so much more. Paramore’s last two albums especially for me have helped me to come into my adulthood and understand and feel like I was being understood better than those in my real life. The Self-Titled record & After Laughter both have helped me with my own axciety & depression around growing up and Caught In the Middle in particular just describes me so well and I love it. She is an incredible person and it shows in her lyrics.

She Started A Hair Dye Company So You Can Look Like 50 Shades of Hayley:

If your reading this post then you’ve probably been a fan of Paramore and Hayley Williams for a while and would have seen the many colors of Hayley Williams’s hair. From her signature orange hair she came out the gate with to her pink, yellow, green, blue, purple, and blonde hair she experimented with over the years. Each new Paramore area found us with a new Hayley hair color. So back in 2016 Hayley and her long time hair stylist Brian O’Connor started the hair dye company Good Dye Young. Then in 2017 they put out a temporary hair dye called Poser Paste. The colors offered by the company include an orange, Riot!; a pink, Ex-Girl; a blue, Blue Ruin; a yellow, Steal My Sunshine; a red, Rock Lobster; a purple, PPL Eater; a green, Kowabunga; a teal, Narwhal; and a black, None More Black. Now the world can finally look like Hayley over the years and express yourself as the badass people you all are.

https://www.mirrormirrorpodcast.com/editorial/ep27hayleywilliams

She Loves Her Family & Her Hometown:

Do you follow Hayley on instagram or twitter? You should this is where you are going to see her repping her family and hometown. She loves Franklin and Nashville and through the band and her hair dye company she employs locals from her town. She also loves to share pictures and videos of her parents, little sisters and grandparents who are the best things in her life. Oh and she now has a dog named Alf who is all over her social media.

People of All Cultures Can Relate To Her:

If you have ever been to a Paramore show or even just seen videos from their concerts then you will see that they are like the rainbow coalition. Every culture from all over the world goes to see Paramore and Hayley Williams. Paramore & Hayley Williams are very big on making all cultures feel welcome at their shows and how not always are people of color felt welcome in the “alternative/pop punk” scene. And although Paramore has not fully been a pop punk band for most of the 2010s they are still put into that scene a lot and to have a fan base that is so diverse it is great to see that we can fit in even in a small way. Also there was a whole article written about black Paramore fans which has always been a thing of course because if your black or any person of color or really anyone and you don’t listen to Paramore what are you even doing with your life?

That Voice:

She isn’t coined the great Orange Hope for nothing. That girl has got a voice on her it just gets better and better with time. Her voice is a national treasure honestly. Just listen to All I Wanted.

She Perseveres Through Everything & Comes Out Shinning:

Again if you have been a Paramore fan as long as I have then you have seen the changes that the band have gone through. From 2010 when Josh & Zac Farro left the band in that very big public split to 2015 when Jeremy Davis left the band in his very public split to not even wanting to do music anymore because you think there must be something wrong with you she has persevered through it all. Each and every time with the help of her best friend Taylor York she has continued to make waves with her music time and time again. She is important and each time someone goes to attack her it’s like she has the shielding of her fans and true friends and family around her to protect her and let her incredible self continue to shine and impact millions of people.

In other words I love you Hayley as I’m sure those millions of other people do too!

Rumble: Indians Who Rocked The World

I watched this very important documentary about how Indigenous people had a hand in helping to create American music whether blues, jazz, country, rock ‘n roll, funk, punk or hardcore rock. How we’ve always been there whether next to our black brothers & sisters, mixed Indigenous & black or because of the way this country has always treated us disguised as black in fear of persecution. How we were apart of some of the biggest bands & played with some of the forefathers of these genera. It’s a very eye-opening documentary as we are often times left out of the cultural conversation of what we call American music & how we basically created it alongside black people. Go check it out if your into history & culture.

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World is a Canadian documentary film by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana, released in 2017. The film profiles the impact of Indigenous musicians in Canada and the United States on the development of rock music. Artists profiled include Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jesse Ed Davis, Stevie Salas, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo, Jimi Hendrix, Taboo and others. The title of the film is a reference to the pioneering instrumental “Rumble”, released in 1958 by the American group Link Wray & His Ray Men. The instrumental piece was very influential on many artists.

The film features many influential musicians who discuss the musical contributions of Indigenous artists, including commentaries from Quincy Jones, George Clinton, Taj Mahal, Martin Scorsese, John Trudell, Steven Tyler, Marky Ramone, Slash, Iggy Pop, Buddy Guy and others. The film premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

This documentary is so important to me. As you know half of the blog post I write are on here are about music & the other has in someway to do with my culture. This encompasses both. We all know that all American music was created by black people but did you know that Native Americans also had a big hand in the creation of such beloved sounds like Blues, Jazz, & Rock? Me either which to me is a shame. I grew up with a father from New Orleans so the Blues and Jazz were a staple for him. Two of his favorite genera of music and something that if you are riding with him you were going to listen to that music that he grew up with coming from Louisiana in the late 40s, 50s and 60s. My mom on the other hand growing up in LA was more into the girl & guy groups of the time, Johnny Mathis, the Beatles and so much more. Through both of these influences of music I gained a sence of pride in what we call American music. And growing up black you of course always had to have the conversation about who really created Rock ‘n Roll but sadly the Native American part of this was always left out. Being both black and Native I over time have tried to find more what I call “mainstream” music that Native people created which led me to today’s artist who are making Indigenous hip-hop but I knew there had to be something in between the boarding school & Trail of Tears survivors and today’s music. What were Native people doing during the creations of this music? We had to play a part in it some how right? Yes & this documentary goes through that history and brings us this important cultural retelling of how Indigenous people had a hand in creating some of the most world renounced music out there.

Before blues, jazz and rock we gotta start with who was here before that. The American government puts a ban on indigenous music due to us uprising and celebrating our culture. We as Native people we all have a song that we sing to the sun, sky, moon, mother Earth, when we wake up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. We have songs to honor people and songs to the creator and sacred things. For us our songs are really important to us and sadly the US government tried to take this away from us but we were too strong for them and that’s why our songs and cultures still live on today (most of us).

One really important group that is keeping that ancient song alive and one of my favorite groups of all time is Ulali.

Ulali

Ulali (/juːlɑːˈliː/) is a Native American women’s a cappella group. Founded in 1987, it includes Pura Fé (Tuscarora/Taino), Soni (Mayan, Apache, Yaqui), and Jennifer Kreisberg (Tuscarora). Ulali’s sound encompasses an array of indigenous music including Southeast United States choral singing (pre-blues and gospel) and pre-Columbian music. Ulali’s live performances address Native struggles and accomplishments. The group was first called “Pura Fe'” and included three female singers and three males. Later, the group became a duo comprising singers, Soni Moreno and Pura Fébefore eventually becoming a trio. In April 2014, the group appeared together for the first time as the “Ulali Project” with Pura Fe’, Jennifer Kreisberg, Charly Lowry and Layla Locklear. The group has performed several times since that formation, including at the People’s Climate March in New York City.

Other groups of people keeping that ancient culture alive are the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans who are a mix of black and Native people. One of my parents very good friends and a man who was like an uncle to me was a man named Nash Porter who documented the Mardi Gras Indians through photography until sadly his death in 2007.

Mardi Gras Indians

Mardi Gras Indians are black carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, who dress up for Mardi Gras in suits influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel. Collectively, their organizations are called “tribes”. There are about 38 tribes. They range in size from half a dozen to several dozen members. The groups are largely independent, but a pair of umbrella organizations loosely coordinate the Uptown Indians and the Downtown Indians.

In addition to Mardi Gras Day, many of the tribes also parade on Saint Joseph’s Day (March 19) and the Sunday nearest to Saint Joseph’s Day (“Super Sunday”). Traditionally, these were the only times Mardi Gras Indians were seen in public in full regalia. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival began the practice of hiring tribes to appear at the Festival as well. In recent years it has become more common to see Mardi Gras Indians at other festivals and parades in the city.

Not with standing the popularity of such activities for tourists and residents alike, the fact remains that the phenomenon of the Mardi Gras Indians reflects both a vital musical history, and an equally vital attempt to express internal social dynamics.

As a major southern trade port, New Orleans became a cultural melting pot. During the late 1740s and 1750s, many enslaved Africans fled to the bayous of Louisiana where they encountered Native Americans. Years later, after the Civil War, hundreds of freed slaves joined the U.S. Ninth Cavalry Regiment, also known as Buffalo Soldiers. The Buffalo Soldiers fought, killed, forced and aided the mass removal and relocation of the Plains Indians on the Western Frontier. After returning to New Orleans, many ex-soldiers joined popular Wild West Shows, most notably Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The show wintered in New Orleans from 1884 to 1885 and was hailed by the Daily Picayune as “the people’s choice”. There was at least one black cowboy on the show, and numerous black cowhands.

On Mardi Gras in 1885, fifty to sixty Plains Indians marched in native dress on the streets of New Orleans. Later that year, the first Mardi Gras Indian gang was formed; the tribe was named “The Creole Wild West” and was most likely composed of members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, though the “Indian gangs” might predate their appearance in the parades.

So because the blues is the reason jazz and rock music was created then we must start at the beginning. One artist they talk about in the documentary was Charley Patton.

Charley Patton

Charley Patton (died April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. Considered by many to be the “Father of the Delta Blues”, he created an enduring body of American music and inspired most Delta blues musicians. The musicologist Robert Palmer considered him one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century.

Patton was born in Hinds County, Mississippi, near the town of Edwards, and lived most of his life in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta. Most sources say he was born in April 1891, but the years 1881, 1885 and 1887 have also been suggested. Patton’s parentage and race also are uncertain. His parents were Bill and Annie Patton, but locally he was regarded as having been fathered by former slave Henderson Chatmon, several of whose children became popular Delta musicians, as solo performers and as members of groups such as the Mississippi Sheiks. Biographer John Faheydescribed Patton as having “light skin and Caucasian features.”

Patton was considered African-American, but because of his light complexion there has been much speculation about his ancestry over the years. One theory endorsed by blues musician Howlin’ Wolf was that Patton was Mexican or Cherokee. It is now generally agreed that Patton was of mixed heritage, with white, black, and Native ancestors. Some believe he had a Cherokee grandmother; however, it is also widely asserted by historians that he was between one-quarter and one-half Choctaw. In “Down the Dirt Road Blues”, Patton sang of having gone to “the Nation” and “the Territo'”, referring to the Cherokee Nation’s portion of the Indian Territory (which became part of the state of Oklahoma in 1907), where a number of Black Indians tried unsuccessfully to claim a place on the tribal rolls and thereby obtain land.

In 1897, his family moved 100 miles (160 km) north to the 10,000-acre (40 km2) Dockery Plantation, a cotton farm and sawmill near Ruleville, Mississippi. There, Patton developed his musical style, influenced by Henry Sloan, who had a new, unusual style of playing music, which is now considered an early form of the blues. Patton performed at Dockery and nearby plantations and began an association with Willie Brown. Tommy Johnson, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, Robert Johnson, and Chester Burnett (who went on to gain fame in Chicago as Howlin’ Wolf) also lived and performed in the area, and Patton served as a mentor to these younger performers. Robert Palmer described Patton as a “jack-of all-trades bluesman”, who played “deep blues, white hillbilly songs, nineteenth-century ballads, and other varieties of black and white country dance music with equal facility”.[12] He was popular across the southern United States and performed annually in Chicago; in 1934, he performed in New York City. Unlike most blues musicians of his time, who were often itinerant performers, Patton played scheduled engagements at plantations and taverns. He gained popularity for his showmanship, sometimes playing with the guitar down on his knees, behind his head, or behind his back. Patton was a small man, about 5 feet 5 inches tall, but his gravelly voice was reputed to have been loud enough to carry 500 yards without amplification; a singing style which particularly influenced Howlin’ Wolf (even though Jimmy Rodgers, the “singing brakeman”, has to be cited there primarily).

Patton settled in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, with his common-law wife and recording partner, Bertha Lee, in 1933. He died on the Heathman-Dedham plantation, near Indianola, on April 28, 1934, and is buried in Holly Ridge (both towns are located in Sunflower County). His death certificate states that he died of a mitral valvedisorder.[15] The death certificate does not mention Bertha Lee; the only informant listed is one Willie Calvin. Patton’s death was not reported in the newspapers. A memorial headstone was erected on Patton’s grave (the location of which was identified by the cemetery caretaker, C. Howard, who claimed to have been present at the burial), paid for by musician John Fogerty through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund in July 1990. The spelling of Patton’s name was dictated by Jim O’Neal, who also composed the epitaph.

Next we have to talk about Jazz which was birthed out of the Delta Blues. One jazz singer who was big in the scene in the 1930s was Mildred Bailey “The Rockin Chair Lady”.

Mildred Bailey

Mildred Bailey (born Mildred Rinker; February 27, 1903 – December 12, 1951) was a popular and influential Native American jazz singer during the 1930s, known as “The Queen of Swing”, “The Rockin’ Chair Lady” and “Mrs. Swing”. Some of her best-known hits are “It’s So Peaceful in the Country”, “Trust in Me”, “Where Are You?”, “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart”, “Small Fry”, “Please Be Kind”, “Darn That Dream”, “Rockin’ Chair”, “Blame It on My Last Affair”, and “Says My Heart”. She had three singles that made number one on the popular charts.

She grew up on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho, where her mother was an enrolled member. The family moved to Spokane, Washington when she was 13. Her younger brothers also became musicians, with her brother Al Rinker starting to perform as a singer with Bing Crosby in Spokane and eventually becoming famous as a member of The Rhythm Boys. Charles Rinker became a lyricist, and Miles Rinker was a clarinet and saxophone player who later became a booking agent.

Bailey was born Mildred Rinker on a farm in rural Tekoa, Washington. Her mother Josephine was a member of the Coeur d’Alene people and a devout Roman Catholic.

Bailey and her siblings grew up near De Smet, Idaho, on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. Her father played fiddle and called square dances. Her mother played piano every evening and taught her to play and sing. Her younger brothers included Miles, Al, a vocalist and composer, and Charles, a lyricist.

Ok so now we have blues and jazz which both led us into rock ‘n roll. At the same time as Sister Rosetatharp & Chuck Berry were creating rock music so were the indigenous community. One of those artist was Link Wray who had a big hand in helping to influence all-electric guitar players that came after him. Link also said in an interview that he learned how to play so well because he learned from a black guy named Hambone who was from the circus & who was just this incredible player. He also said that all the white popular music back then was too safe and bubble gum so he listened to all the black music & that is how he rocked so hard.

Link Wray

Fred Lincoln “Link” Wray, Jr. (May 2, 1929 – November 5, 2005) was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. Building on the distorted electric guitar sound of early records, his 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble” by Link Wray & His Ray Men popularized “the power cord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists,” facilitating the emergence of “punk and heavy rock”. Rolling Stone placed Wray at No. 45 of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. In 2013 and 2017 he was a nominee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though he began in country music, his musical style went on to consist primarily of rock and roll, rockabilly, and instrumental rock.

Wray was born on May 2, 1929 in Dunn, North Carolina, to Fred Lincoln Wray, Sr. and his wife, Lillian M. Wray (née Coats), who were Shawnee Native Americans, although the 1930 and 1940 censuses refer to them as White. Three songs he performed were named for American Indian tribes: “Shawnee,” “Apache,” and “Comanche.” “Apache” was an instrumental composed by Jerry Lordan; it was originally a hit in the United Kingdom for The Shadows in 1960 and reached #2 on the Billboard charts in the U.S. on April 3, 1961 by Danish guitarist Jørgen Ingmann. Wray recorded a cover version 30 years later, when it was also associated with The Ventures and the Incredible Bongo Band.

In 1958, Wray’s first hit, “Rumble,” was banned in New York and Boston for fear it would incite teenage gang violence. The record was first released on Cadence Records(catalog number 1347) as by “Link Wray & His Ray Men.” Before, during, and after his stints with major labels Epic and Swan, Wray released 45’s under many names. Tiring of the corporate music machine, he began recording albums using a three-track studio he converted from an outbuilding on his brother’s property that his father used to raise chickens.

While living in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s, Wray was introduced to Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cipollina by bassist James “Hutch” Hutchinson. He subsequently formed a band initially featuring special guest Cipollina along with the rhythm section from Cipollina’s band Copperhead, bassist James “Hutch” Hutchinson, and drummer David Weber. They opened for the band Lighthouse at The Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles from May 15–19, 1974. He later did numerous concerts and radio broadcasts in the Bay Area including KSAN and the Bill Graham venue Winterland Ballroom, with Les Lizama later replacing Hutchinson on bass.[12] He toured and recorded two albums with retro-rockabilly artist Robert Gordon in the late 1970s. The 1980s to the present day saw a large number of reissues as well as new material. One member of his band in the 1980s, drummer Anton Fig, later became drummer in the CBS Orchestra on the Late Show with David Letterman. In 1994, he played on four songs of the album Chatterton by French rocker Alain Bashung. He went on to release two albums of new music: Shadowman (1997) and Barbed Wire (2005). Recently discovered recordings are slated to be released in 2018.

Because of Link Wray and his big contribution to the creation of rock music people & bands like Jesse Ed Davis, Stevie Salas, Robbie Robertson, Redbone, Randy Costillo, Jimi Hendrix & many other Indigenous artist found a way to connect and make this type of music that through it was a connection to their culture. It is said most big bands and artist wanted these Native artist to play with them do to them bringing a different more organic spirit to their playing which makes sense because of our high connection to the Earth.

Robbie Robertson

Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson, OC (born July 5, 1943), is a Canadian musician, songwriter, film composer, producer, actor, and author. His career spans six decades.

Robertson is best known for his work as lead guitarist and primary songwriter for the Band, and for his career as a solo recording artist. His work with the Band was instrumental in creating the Americana music genre. Robertson has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as a member of the Band, and has been inducted to Canada’s Walk of Fame, both with the Band and on his own. He is ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists.

As a songwriter, Robertson is credited for writing “The Weight”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Up on Cripple Creek”, “Broken Arrow”, “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, and many others. He has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters.

As a film soundtrack producer and composer, Robertson is known for his collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, which began with the rockumentary film The Last Waltz (1978), and continued through a number of dramatic films, including Raging Bull (1980) and Casino (1995). He has worked on many other soundtracks for film and television.

Now of course Jimi Hendrix has to be my favorite artist of this list. For most black kids who are into rock music we trace it back to Jimi. For me he was more than that he connected me to my roots of being black, Cherokee and white. I remember the first picture I saw of Jimi when I was very little I felt this energy from the picture of him lighting his guitar on fire. When I see certain outfits he would wear I saw our culture in those clothes or the way he played that guitar and sang had the rhythms of our black & Native ancestors in it something many other rock artist at the time couldn’t match. The fact that he was so proud of his culture really touches me & helps me to continue to be proud of my black & Native roots as well.

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music”.

Jimi Hendrix had a diverse heritage. His paternal grandmother, Zenora “Nora” Rose Moore, was African-American and one-quarter Cherokee. Hendrix’s paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix (born 1866), was born out of an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny, and a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. After Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, Canada, had a son they named James Allen Ross Hendrix on June 10, 1919; the family called him “Al”.Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division; he was granted an honorable discharge the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin’ Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers’ backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager.[2] Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze”, and “The Wind Cries Mary”. He achieved fame in the U.S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U.S.; it was Hendrix’s most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world’s highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27.

Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone altering effects units, such as fuzz tone, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe in mainstream rock. He was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: “Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began.”

Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Makervoted him the Pop Musician of the Year, and in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band’s three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.

Randy Castillo as said by Stevie Salas was one the worlds best heavy metal drummers who worked with everyone including Ozzy Ozborn. He was Apache and Mexican with roots in New Mexico. Everytime he felt anykind of pressure or the limelight got too much he would go back to those roots and take Stevie Salas who didn’t fully have the same connection to his Native roots with him back home. His grandmother was a Curandera and he embodied that Native drum rhythem that connected him back to the Earth like his ancestors did & put it into this mainstream music.

Randy Castillo

Randolpho Francisco Castillo (December 18, 1950 – March 26, 2002) was an American musician. He was as Ozzy Osbourne’s drummer during the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and later as drummer for Mötley Crüe, from 1999 to his death in 2002. Castillo was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was inspired to take up the drums after seeing The Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

In 1984, Castillo was hired to play drums for Lita Ford and was featured on her Dancin’ On The Edge album. Ford introduced Castillo to her boyfriend, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, and Nikki’s bandmate Tommy Lee. Shortly after the “Dancin’ on the Edge” tour, Lee called Castillo from a party he was at with Ozzy Osbourne and told him Ozzy was looking for a new drummer. Despite being unable to audition right away due to a broken leg he suffered while skiing, Castillo was hired by Osbourne a couple of months later and ended up staying with the Ozzy Osbourne band for ten years, recording five albums with Ozzy during that time: The Ultimate Sin (1986), No Rest for the Wicked (1988), an EP entitled Just Say Ozzy (1990), No More Tears (1991), and a double-disc live album, Live & Loud (1993).

After recording Ozzy’s live album in 1993, he joined the short-lived Bone Angels, followed by Red Square Black. Castillo also briefly returned to Osbourne’s band in 1995 for a tour, and played drums on several tribute albums during this time. He played with Ronnie James Dio on a cover of Alice Cooper’s “Welcome To My Nightmare” on the Alice Cooper tribute album “Welcome To The Nightmare (An All Star Tribute To Alice Cooper)[3] ” and performed all drumming duties on a star-studded Def Leppard tribute album titled Leppardmania. The album featured John Corabi (Angora, The Scream, Mötley Crüe), Paul Shortino (Rough Cutt, Quiet Riot), Kevin DuBrow (Quiet Riot), Joe Leste (Bang Tango), and Jani Lane (Warrant, solo artist), among others. Guitar and bass duties were handled by Jerry Dixon and Erik Turner of Warrant, and Tracii Gunsof L.A. Guns.

In 1999, after Lee had left Mötley Crüe, Sharon Osbourne called Castillo and suggested he join the band, which he did without audition. He’d previously briefly played with Vince Neil as a touring drummer for the Vince Neil Band, and was an old friend of the band. His only recording with the band, 2000’s New Tattoo, was somewhat of a return to the classic Mötley Crüe sound. However, fan reaction was mixed and the album was not as successful as the band was hoping it would be. Still, there was excitement over the upcoming tour due to the revival in interest of many ’80s hard rock acts, and the band geared up for their “Maximum Rock” tour with thrash metal legends Anthrax and Megadeth.

A couple of weeks before Mötley Crüe was set to tour the New Tattoo album, Castillo became ill while performing with his mariachi side project Azul at the Cat Club in Hollywood. Immediately after the show Castillo took a cab to nearby Cedars Sinai Hospital where he collapsed as he was being admitted. The doctors discovered a duodenal ulcer that had ruptured his stomach and performed emergency surgery that saved Castillo’s life. While taking time off from Mötley Crüe to recover from his surgery, he discovered a small lump on his jaw and a month later, after it had grown to roughly the size of a golf ball, he sought treatment and was diagnosed with Squamous cell Carcinoma,[5] a common form of cancer that is not usually fatal if it is discovered early but can spread rapidly if left untreated. The cancer went into remission in mid-2001, and he was rumored to be rejoining Osbourne’s solo band for that summer Ozzfest tour (along with Geezer Butler on bass), though these rumors were later revealed to be untrue.

Within a few months the cancer returned, and a few days after returning to the doctors, Castillo died on March 26, 2002 aged 51. During the final weeks of his life, Castillo had been working with ex-Ozzy Osbourne and Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez on a new band and was in the process of hiring a singer.

I had discovered Redbone back when Guardians of the Galaxy came out back in 2014. I loved the funky rhythms of the song and how incredible slick this groove was but it wasn’t until a year or two later that I discovered they were Indigenous. Then I watched their Midnight Special performance were they were dressed in their traditional regalia & started the performance with a stomp dance on live tv which was powerful. I fell in love. I then looked into other songs they had and they were all about Native things but they were so funky I felt this was right up my ally. Redbone credit Jimi Hendrix for giving them the ok to do the Native thing. They say he told them to do the Native thing which I find to be incredible Indigenous solidarity during a time where doing the Native thing could get you killed.

Redbone

Redbone is a Native American rock group originating in the 1970s with brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas. They reached the Top 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1974 with their No. 4 hit single, “Come and Get Your Love”. The single went certified Gold selling over a million copies. Redbone achieved hits with their singles “We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee”, “The Witch Queen of New Orleans”, “Wovoka”, and “Maggie” in the United States, although these singles were more successful overseas. Redbone is known and accredited in the NY Smithsonian as the first Native American rock/Cajun group to have a No. 1 single in the United States and internationally.

Born in Coalinga, California, near Fresno, brothers Patrick (bass and vocals) and Candido “Lolly” Vasquez-Vegas (guitar and vocals) moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and played for 10 years in Clubs under the name of Pat and Lolly Vegas. Pat won the first ever singing competition held by Coca-Cola in 1958 at the age of 17. Pat had also won a recording contract which he put off to move to Los Angeles with his brother Lolly. They performed at local clubs on Hollywood and Sunset Blvd, such as Gazzari’s, while writing and playing on records by Tina Turner, Sonny & Cher, James Brown, Little Richard, Elvis, among other legendary recording artists.

The word “redbone” is a Cajun term for a mixed-race person, which the band adopted to signify their own mixed blood ancestry. Patrick and Lolly Vasquez-Vegas were a mixture of Yaqui, Shoshone, and Mexican heritage. The band often alluded to Cajun and New Orleans culture in their lyrics and performing style. The brothers began by performing and recording surf music as the Vegas Brothers, “because their agent told them that the world was not yet ready to embrace a duo of Mexican musicians playing surfing music”. First as the Vegas Brothers, then later as the Crazy Cajun Cakewalk Band, Pat and Lolly performed throughout the 1960s at venues on the Las Vegas Strip.

Before forming Redbone, Pat and Lolly released an album in the mid-1960s entitled Pat & Lolly Vegas at the Haunted House (Mercury MG 21059/SR 61059). Of the twelve songs on the album, six were originals by the Vasquez-Vegas brothers which earned them some early success. Pat and Lolly also appeared on the 60’s hit show Shindig! repeatedly, becoming regular performers. They also released several singles from 1961 to the mid-1960s. One of them was titled “Robot Walk” / “Don’t You Remember” (Apogee Records A-101) and more making a name for themselves in early years. In 1967 P.J. Proby recorded his only Top 30 hit “Niki Hoeky” by Jim Ford, Lolly Vegas, and Pat Vegas. The next year, Bobbie Gentry performed the Cajun-influenced song on The Summer Smothers Brothers Show. Pat Vegas also wrote songs for legendary names like Aretha Franklin amongst others.

According to Pat Vegas, it was Jimi Hendrix, himself part Cherokee, who inspired the musicians to form an all-Native American rock group. They signed as the band “Redbone” to Epic Records in 1969. The band then consisted of Pat Vegas, Lolly Vegas, Peter DePoe and Robert Anthony Avila, a Yaqui-Mexican American, better known by his stage name Tony Bellamy. Their debut album Redbone was released in 1970.

Redbone played primarily rock music with R&B, Cajun, blue-eyed soul, funk, country, tribal, and Latin roots. Their first world commercial success came with the single”The Witch Queen of New Orleans” that peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and followed by the single “Maggie” from their second album, Potlatch. “Come and Get Your Love” followed as a smash No. 5 hit for Redbone and remained on the chart for 24 weeks being certified gold by the R.I.A.A. on April 22, 1974. Redbone was also the opening act introducing the very first Earth Day to the world in Philadelphia along with Senator Edmund Muskie. Their opening song was “Chant 13th Hour” from the Potlatch album.

Redbone’s music was characterized by the Leslie rotating speaker effect that Lolly Vegas used for his electric guitar amplifier and a “King Kong” style of drumming developed by drummer Peter DePoe (born 1943, Neah Bay, Washington). The first self-titled album by Redbone was released as a double album in North America. In Europe it was released both as a double (EPC 67242) and as a single album (BN 26280) on the Epic label. Their third album, Message from a Drum, was released in Europe (except Spain) with the title The Witch Queen of New Orleans and different cover than the one released in the U.S. and Canada.

In 1973, Redbone released the politically oriented “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee”, recalling the massacre of Lakota Sioux Indians by the 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1890. The song ends with the subtly altered sentence “We were all wounded ‘by’ Wounded Knee”. It charted in several European countries and reached the No. 1 position in The Netherlands but did not chart in the U.S. where it was initially withheld from release due to lyrical controversy and then banned by several radio stations due to its confrontation of a sore subject. DePoe had left this band in 1972. He was replaced by Arturo Perez (1939- ), but later by Bellamy’s Filipino-Chicano cousin, Butch Rillera around that point. Following this the band achieved much of their commercial success. Tony Bellamy (guitar, piano and vocals) left the band in 1977, with Rillera leaving shortly after.

The band’s current remaining membership is led by Pat Vegas, although an array of new members have joined Redbone since then due to Lolly Vegas suffering a strokethat left him unable to tour with the band. No member has been official other than Pat Vegas after the original members were not present. A proposed reunion tour in 2003 did not occur. There is evidence that suggests the existence of an “imposter band” (one of many who try to gain recognition) who was illegally touring the United States and posing as Redbone under the name (or alias) “Denny Freeman”. Freeman – who Pat Vegas confirmed to be unaffiliated with Redbone in an interview with the Montana Standard – defrauded the county fair board of the Butte Silver-Bow County Fair in Butte, Montana, under pretenses of being a co-founding member of Redbone, yet he was never a band member.[13][14]

On December 25, 2009, Tony Bellamy died of liver failure at a hospital in his hometown of Las Vegas. Less than three months later, Lolly Vegas succumbed to lung cancer at his family home in Reseda, California, on March 4, 2010. Redbone has had some limited activity in recent years in the major public eye, but Pat Vegas continues to tour in the United States and Canada in support of his solo albums, Ambergris, Peacepipe, and Speed of Sound.

With Jesse Ed Davis his death was sad. Apparently he had this magic power about him who could play the blues guitar like no other. Taj Mahal music was on fire because of him, All four Beatles were in love with him, Claptain & the Rolling Stones admired him & he gave Jackson Browne a top 10 hit. He was on top of the world at that time. But sadly like most musicians at the time drugs & alcohol got to him when he was on tour with Rod Steward which if you know anything about Indigenous people alcohol and drugs are not good for us & brings us back to the terrible history of the colonizer abusing us once again with something that was foreign to us. The fact though that he was so out and proud about his Native culture was really powerful & important and I am very glad I know about this man now.

Jesse Ed Davis

Jesse Edwin Davis (September 21, 1944 – June 22, 1988) was a Native American guitarist. He was well-regarded as a session artist. His death in 1988 was attributed to a drug overdose. Davis was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, Jesse Ed Davis II, was Comanche, and his mother’s side was Kiowa. His father was an accomplished artist known for his “true Indian” painting style; his works were exhibited in the capitol in Oklahoma City. Davis began his musical career in the late 1950s in Oklahoma City and surrounding cities with John Ware (later a drummer for Emmylou Harris), John Selk (later a bass player for Donovan), Jerry Fisher (later a vocalist with Blood, Sweat & Tears), Mike Boyle, Chris Frederickson, drummer Bill Maxwell (later with Andrae Crouch and Koinonia) and others. By the mid-1960s he quit school and went touring with Conway Twitty.

Davis joined Taj Mahal and played guitar and piano on Mahal’s first three albums. He played slide, lead and rhythm, country and even jazz during his three-year stint with Mahal, making an appearance with the band as a musical guest in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. After Mahal’s 1969 album Giant Step, Davis turned to session work for David Cassidy, Albert King, Willie Nelson and others. In 1970, he played on and produced Roger Tillison’s only album for Atco Records, a division of Atlantic. Davis and Tillison − both Oklahoman − were joined at the Record Plant by Bobby Bruce (fiddle), Larry Knechtel (organ and harmonica), Stan Szelest (piano); Billy Rich (bass); Jim Keltner (drums) and Sandy Konikoff (percussion); Don Preston and Joey Cooper were vocal accompanists. Roger Tillison’s Album was recorded live. It was finally released on CD by Wounded Bird Records in 2008, with Davis playing electric guitar, bottleneck (slide) guitar and banjo. The Woody Guthrie song “Old Cracked Looking Glass” has become a standard for Oklahoma bands.

In 1971, Davis recorded his first solo album after Atco Records signed a contract with him to record two albums with the label. The first was the album Jesse Davis (1971), which featured backing vocals by Gram Parsons and performances by Leon Russell and Eric Clapton, among others.

Davis was close friends with Gene Clark. In 1971, he played on and produced Clark’s second solo album, White Light, and provided lead guitar on Clark’s album No Otherin 1974. At Jackson Browne´s debut in 1972, he played the solo on “Doctor My Eyes”.

After guesting with Russell on Bob Dylan’s 1971 single “Watching the River Flow”, Davis went on to work with George Harrison, performing at the ex-Beatle’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh extravaganza at Madison Square Garden, along with Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Russell, Keltner, Clapton and others.

Two more solo albums followed: in 1972 Ululu, which included the original release of Harrison’s “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”, and in 1973 Keep Me Comin, occasionally listed as Keep On Coming. Around this time, Davis began playing with John Lennon, for whom he played lead guitar on the albums Walls and Bridges (1974) and Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975). In addition, Davis was a guest performer on other albums by former Beatles: Harrison’s Extra Texture (1975) and Starr’s Goodnight Vienna(1974) and Ringo’s Rotogravure (1976).

In the late summer and fall of 1975, he performed with the Faces as second guitarist throughout their final US tour. Davis continued to work as a session player. In addition to the artists listed above, Davis contributed to albums by Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Keith Moon, Steve Miller, Guthrie Thomas, Harry Nilsson, Ry Cooder, Neil Diamond, Rick Danko, Van Dyke Parks and others. He played on Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977), produced by Phil Spector.[citation needed]

In 1977, he moved to Hawaii; In 1981, he returned to Los Angeles “broke and ravaged by drug and alcohol addiction”. In and out of clinics, Davis disappeared from the music industry for a time, spending much of the 1980s dealing with alcohol and drug addiction. Throughout the ten years he was with Patti Daley, they never married. In the following years he married twice. While married to his second wife, in 1985 he formed and played in the Graffiti Band, which coupled his music with the poetry of the Native American activist John Trudell.

In the spring of 1987, the Graffiti Band performed with Taj Mahal at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, California. At this show, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and John Fogerty got up from the audience to join Davis and Mahal in an unreleased set which included Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” and Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow”, as well as classics such as “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Peggy Sue”, “Honey Don’t”, “Matchbox” and “Gone, Gone, Gone”.

Davis collapsed and was pronounced dead in Venice, California, on June 22, 1988. Police stated his death appeared to be the result of a drug overdose. He was 43 years old. In 2002, he was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.

Stevie Salas

Stevie Salas is a Native American guitarist, author, television host, music director, record producer, film composer, and Advisor of Contemporary Music at The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

In 1990, Salas released his first solo album Stevie Salas Colorcode, opening for Joe Satriani and his 1989 album Flying in a Blue Dream. Salas’ music received attention in both Japan and Europe.

In 1993, he released Stevie Salas Electric Pow Wow, a covers album of songs that inspired Salas as a youth featuring guest artists like Zakk Wylde, Glenn Hughes, T.M. Stevens, Richie Kotzen and Slim Jim Phantom. Then in 1994, Salas released Back From the Living in Japan, where his singles “Start Again” and “Tell Your Story Walkin” were released. During this time, he also appeared on the album Rats by then girlfriend Sass Jordan. Stevie was touring guitarist for Rod Stewart´s Out Of Order tour where he got the inspiration for his book ˝When We Where The Boys˝, a hilarious book of memories of touring world stages.

In 2001, Mick Jagger hired him as guitarist and music director for Jagger’s “Goddess in the Doorway” Tour. Later that year Salas released “Shapeshifter: The Fall and Rise of Stevie No-Wonder.” In 2003, he released The Soulblasters of the Universe, and did his first European Colorcode tour since 1999.

From 2006 to 2010, Salas served as music director and consultant for American Idol and 19 Entertainment nurturing Kris Allen, Adam Lambert, Chris Daughtry, and their respective touring bands for subsequent American tours.

Salas began working as host and executive producer of the Canadian Music TV series Arbor Live for APTN. In mid-2009, Salas co-founded with the internet entrepreneur Laurence Dorazio the company Rockstar Solos, LLC which focuses on iPhone and iPad gaming and entertainment application development. The first application also called Rockstar Solos became available in the iTunes Store in December 2009. The company Rockstar Logic has thousands of downloads to date.

In 2009, Salas worked with T.I and Justin Timberlake on the song “Dead and Gone,” the single eventually reaching #2 on the US Billboard Charts. Later that year, Salas received a Native American Lifetime Achievement Award at the Native American Music Awards. From 2010 to 2012, he served as the advisor to contemporary music at National Museum of the American Indian. He co-created both the Up Where We Belong-Natives In Popular Culture exhibit and The Living Earth Festival. In 2012 Salas created and is executive producer of Catch The Dream Bios with Adam Beach for APTN with shows airing 2014.

2017 and present Salas is Executive Producer of ‘RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World’, a Native American music documentary for PBS and Super Channel.[10](2017 Sundance winner for Masterful Storytelling). Executive Producer and Creator of Dreamcatcher Bios (currently in production). Produced by Rezolution Pictures Montreal Canada for APTN television. Co-Wrote and Produced the new project/band INABA/SALAS with Japanese superstar vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Koshi Inaba for the Japanese record label Vermillion Records. Chubby Groove album was released on January 18, 2017 and was the #2 album in the country that week and remained in the top 10 for several weeks after. The album was supported by sold-out Chubby Groove Tour 2017 that played throughout Japan in January/February 2017. The record was certified Gold in Japan on October 4, 2017.

You also had the Native influence on folk music as well in artist like Peter La Farge & Buffy Saint Marie who were talking about Native issues on a national scale in the ’60s & ’70s.

Peter La Farge (born Oliver Albee La Farge, April 30, 1931 – October 27, 1965) was a New York-based folksinger and songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for his affiliations with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

Oliver Albee La Farge was born in 1931 to Oliver La Farge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and anthropologist, and Wanden (Matthews) La Farge, a Rhode Island heiress. The family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where his younger sister Povy was born in 1933, but his parents’ marriage fell apart. They separated and divorced in 193.[2][3] His father married Consuelo Baca, with whom he had one child, Peter’s half-brother John Pendaries La Farge, nicknamed “Pen” (b. 1952). Wanden took the children with her and bought a ranch in Fountain, Colorado, in 1940, later marrying foreman Alexander F. “Andy” Kane.

La Farge grew up partly in New Mexico and partly on the Kane Ranch in Colorado, although he did not get along well with his stepfather. He shared a love and respect with his father for the histories and cultures of Native Americans, with which his father was deeply involved in study. But he later became estranged from his father, changed his given name to Peter, and at times would even claim, falsely, that he was adopted. He also claimed to be distantly descended from the Narragansett Indian tribe through his New England ancestors.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.

In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation Reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was later adopted, growing up in Massachusetts, with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi’kmaq descent. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating in the top ten of her class.

In 1964, on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a powwow she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Emile Piapot and his wife, Clara Starblanket Piapot, who added to Sainte-Marie’s cultural value of, and place in, native culture.

In late 1975, Sainte Marie received a phone call from Sesame Street producer Dulcy Singer to appear on the show for a one-shot guest appearance. Sainte-Marie told Singer she had no interest in doing a children’s TV show, but reconsidered after asking “Have you done any Native American programming?” According to Sainte-Marie, Singer wanted her to count and recite the alphabet but Buffy wanted to teach the show’s young viewers that “Indians still exist”. She regularly appeared on Sesame Street over a five-year period from 1976–81. Sainte Marie breastfed her first son, Dakota “Cody” Starblanket Wolfchild, during a 1977 episode, which is believed to be the first representation of breastfeeding ever aired on television.Sesame Street even aired a week of shows from her home in Hawaii in January 1978.

Sainte-Marie claimed in a 2008 interview at the National Museum of the American Indian that she had been blacklisted by American radio stations and that she, along with Native Americans and other native people in the Red Power movements, were put out of business in the 1970s.

In a 1999 interview at Diné College with a staff writer with Indian Country Today, Sainte-Marie said “I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music” and “In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked.”

As a result of this blacklisting, purportedly led by (among others) Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Nashville disc jockey Ralph Emery (following the release of I’m Gonna Be a Country Girl Again), Sainte-Marie said “I was put out of business in the United States”.

Other Native Artist Featured In The Film:

Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens- (born February 21, 1977) is an American musician. Giddens is multiracial in ancestry. Giddens’ father was white and her mother was African-American and Native American. She is known as the lead singer, violinist, banjo player and a founding member of the Grammy-winning country, blues and old-time music band Carolina Chocolate Drops. She is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, an alumna of the elite North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory where she studied opera. In addition to her work with the Drops, Giddens has released two solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017). She married Irish musician Michael Laffan in 2007. The couple have a daughter, Aoife, and a son, Caoimhín. Giddens has homes in Greensboro, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Limerick, Ireland. She and Michael Laffan are now separated.

John Trudell

John Trudell (February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015) was a Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes’ takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz. During most of the 1970s, he served as the chairman of the American Indian Movement, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

After his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a suspicious fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada, Trudell turned to writing, music and film as a second career. He acted in films in the 1990s. The documentary Trudell (2005) was made about him and his life as an activist and artist.

Trudell was born in Omaha, Nebraska on February 15, 1946, as the son of a Santee Dakota father and a Mexican mother. He grew up in small towns near the Santee Sioux Reservation in northern Nebraska near the southeast corner of South Dakota. He was educated in local schools and also in Santee Dakota culture.

In 1979, John Trudell met musical artist and activist Jackson Browne and became more interested in the musical world (and recording albums and performing his own compositions in live venues).

Trudell recorded an album A.K.A Grafitti Man (“graffiti” was misspelled in the title) with Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis that was originally available on cassette tape format only. This comports with the practice common to American indigenous and other so-called minorities of distributing music mixtapes captured live at group events and copied and distributed through non-commercial channels, like those of the San Francisco-based rock group Grateful Dead, Native American powwow music performances in general, and African-American gatherings whence came the expression Each One Teach One, common also to an emerging grassroots movement that was arguably itself a response to the reactionary madness of slavery and/or military-industrial/imperialist hegemony flourishing in the 1980s.

In 1990 John Trudell took part in Tony Hymas’s Oyaté project. In 1992 Trudell remade and re-released A.K.A Grafitti Man as an audio CD to substantial critical and popular acclaim.

Arguably his greatest musical success came with the 1994 album Johnny Damas & Me that was described as “a culmination of years of poetic work, and an example of a process of fusing traditional sounds, values, and sensibilities with thought-provoking lyrics, this time with urgent rock and roll.”

Popular Music critic Neal Ullestad said of Trudell’s live performances, “This isn’t simply pop rock with Indian drums and chants added. It’s integrated rock and roll by an American Indian with a multicultural band directed to anyone who will listen.” The closing sequence of Alanis Obomsawin’s 2014 documentary film Trick or Treaty? is set to Trudell’s song “Crazy Horse.”

Taboo

Jaime Luis Gomez (born July 14, 1975), known professionally as Taboo, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, actor and DJ, best known as a member of the hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas.

Robert Tujillo

Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Perez de la Santa Concepción Trujillo Veracruz Bautista (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈβeɾto tɾuˈxiʎo]; born October 23, 1964) better known as Robert Trujillo, is an American musician and songwriter. He has been the bassist of the American heavy metal band Metallica since 2003. He was also a member of crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies, funk metal supergroup Infectious Grooves, heavy metal band Black Label Society, and has worked with Jerry Cantrell and Ozzy Osbourne.

Alvin Youngblood Hart

Alvin Youngblood Hart (born Gregory Edward Hart, March 2, 1963 in Oakland, California, United States) is a Grammy Award-winning American musician.

Hart was born in Oakland, California, and spent some time in Carroll County, Mississippi, in his youth, where he was influenced by the Mississippi Country Blues performed by his relatives.[2] Hart is known as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of country blues. He is also known as a faithful torchbearer for the 1960s and 1970s guitar rock of his youth, as well as Western Swing and vintage country. His music has been compared to a list of diverse artists ranging from Lead Belly, Spade Cooley to acoustic and electric guitar as well as banjo and sometimes the mandolin. Bluesman Taj Mahal once said about Hart: “The boy has got thunder in his hands.” Hart himself said, “I guess my big break came when I opened for Taj Mahal for four nights at Yoshi’s.”

His debut album, Big Mama’s Door, came out in 1996. In 2003, Hart’s album Down in the Alley was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. In 2005, Hart received a Grammy Award for his contribution to Beautiful Dreamer – The Songs of Stephen Foster.

Hart was featured in the 2003 Wim Wenders film The Soul of a Man, which was featured in Martin Scorsese’s film series The Blues. Hart was also featured in the documentary Last of the Mississippi Jukes. Hart appeared in the film The Great Debaters in 2007, playing a 1930s juke-joint musician.

In 2010 Hart teamed up with friends Jimbo Mathus and Luther Dickinson to form The South Memphis String Band. Their first album, Home Sweet Home, was nominated for “Best Acoustic Album” at the 2011 Blues Foundation Music Awards. The group released a second album, Old Times There, in the spring of 2012.

Corey Harris

Corey Harris (born February 21, 1969; Denver, Colorado) is an American blues and reggae musician, currently residing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Along with Keb’ Mo’ and Alvin Youngblood Hart, he raised the flag of acoustic guitar blues in the mid-1990s. He was featured on the 2003 PBS television mini-series, The Blues, in an episode directed by Martin Scorsese.

Howlin’ Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), known as Howlin’ Wolf, was a Chicago blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player, originally from Mississippi. With a booming voice and imposing physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. The musician and critic Cub Koda noted, “no one could match Howlin’ Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits.” Producer Sam Phillips recalled, “When I heard Howlin’ Wolf, I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'” Several of his songs, including “Smokestack Lightnin'”, “Killing Floor” and “Spoonful”, have become blues and blues rockstandards. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 54 on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.

The Neville Brothers

The Neville Brothers are a very distant relative to my family on father’s side by the way. The Neville Brothers is an American R&B/soul/funk group, formed in 1977 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The group notion started in 1976, when the four brothers of the Neville family, Art (born 1937), Charles, (1938–2018), Aaron (b. 1941), and Cyril (b. 1948) got together to take part in the recording session of The Wild Tchoupitoulas, a Mardi Gras Indian group led by the Nevilles’ uncle, George Landry (“Big Chief Jolly”).

In 1988, the group released Uptown from EMI featuring guests including Branford Marsalis, Keith Richards, and Carlos Santana. The following year saw the release of Yellow Moon from A&M Records produced by Daniel Lanois. The track “Healing Chant” from that album won best pop instrumental performance of the Grammy Awards.[1]

In 1990, the Neville Brothers contributed “In the Still of the Night” to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Blue produced by the Red Hot Organization.

Also in 1990, they appeared on the bill at that year’s Glastonbury Festival. Due to Art Neville’s health issues, the band kept a low profile in the late 1990s onto the early 2000s. They made a comeback in 2004, however, with the album, Walkin’ In The Shadow Of Life, from Back Porch Records, their first newly recorded effort in five years.[citation needed]

All brothers except Charles, a Massachusetts resident, had been living in New Orleans, but following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 Cyril and Aaron moved out of the city. They had not been performing in New Orleans since Katrina hit the city, however, they finally returned to perform there at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2008, being given the closing spot which had been reserved for them for years.

Infrequently, Ivan Neville, Aaron’s son (keyboards) and Ian Neville, Art’s son (electric guitar), both of the band Dumpstaphunk, have played with the band in recent years. The group formally disbanded in 2012 but reunited in 2015 for a farewell concert in New Orleans. Charles Neville died of pancreatic cancer on April 26, 2018 at the age of 79.

Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, (his first name pronounced ‘Shoe-Tez-Caht’) recently turned 18. He’s an indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of a global youth-led environmental movement. At the early age of six Xiuhtezcatl began speaking around the world, from the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro, to addressing the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York city. He has worked locally to get pesticides out of parks, coal ash contained, and moratoriums on fracking in his state and is currently a lead plaintiff in a youth-led lawsuit against the federal government for their failure to protect the atmosphere for future generations.

Xiuhtezcatl has traveled across the nation and to many parts of the world educating his generation about the state of the planet they are inheriting and inspiring youth into action to protect the planet. Earth Guardian has grown to hundreds of crews in over 50 countries.

His work has been featured on PBS, Showtime, National Geographic, Rolling Stones, Upworthy, The Guardian, Vogue, Bill Maher, Skavlan, CNN, MSNBC, HBO, VICE, and more.

In 2013, Xiuhtezcatl received the 2013 United States Community Service Award from President Obama, and was the youngest of 24 national change-makers chosen to serve on the President’s youth council.

He is the 2015 recipient of the Peace First Prize, recipient of the 2015 Nickelodeon Halo Award, 2016 Captain Planet Award winner, recipient of 2016 Children’s Climate Prize in Sweden, and received the 2017 Univision Premio’s Ajente de Cambio Award.

Bill Mckibben of 350.org calls Xiuhtezcatl “an impressive spokesman for a viewpoint the world needs to hear.”

Martinez lives with his family in Boulder, Colorado. His mother, Tamara Roske, is the Executive Director of Earth Guardians, a worldwide organization of conservation-minded children and young adults. He has two younger siblings, a sister, Tonantzin, and a brother, Itzcuauhtli. His father, Siri Martinez, is of Aztec heritage and he has raised his children in the tradition of the Mexica, one of the indigenous Aztec peoples of Mexico.

On October 5th, Xiuhtezcatl came out with his debut album Break Free & it is a bop! Previously he blessed us with some music on his EP Broken and then dropped a few more tracks on Break Free. Xiuhtezcatl to me is what I wish I could have been at his age. I feel I had the mind-set but didn’t fully act upon it then. He has been putting in work for the climate since he was 5 years old as apart of Earth Guardians. He is indigenous and he honors that to the fullest and I love it. He is a great voice for his generation and really holds the youth voice high which is very important in these crazy times. His music is really talking to the youth but also talking to adults who can’t get with the program and just do their part to help make the youth’s future better. He talks about mental health and the pressures of the youth growing up today on one track. He also talks about his indigenous culture & how he grew up. And of course he talks about the revolution a lot which I am all about. Anyway let’s get into this album review and get my thoughts on this beautiful music.

“Tiahuliz / Light”

This is the opener of the album and it starts off with a some violin from Richard Vagner and some shakers. He starts off by speaking in Spanish before going into English. He talks about his dad giving him that indigenous wisdom to keep fighting and that this music will help to save the youth for generations and to honor those who came before and will come after him and help to light a spark in all us and his legacy.

“Sage Up” Feat. Stic, Cavem, Matene Strikesfirst

One of my favorite tracks on the album. It starts off with a Lakota elder singing with a drum beat and rattles behind it then it goes into the rapping. He talks about different indigenous ways of clearing energy and different indigenous cultures. My favorite part is the chorus when they say “Sage Up…I can hear it in the wind this music is medicine” Then Xiuhtezxatl comes in and he starts to talk about indigenous resistance like Standing Rock and says “pray for the youth”. Then Stic from Dead Prez talks about freeing the slaves and resistance and whither & it is the beginning of the end or a new beginning. Xiuhtezxatl then talks about Standing Rock and freeing Red Fawn and then talks about the killings of unarmed black youth at the hands of the police and makes that connection to both of them. It ends on a great drum beat.

“Magic” Feat. Tru

Song starts off with Xiuhtezcatl sister Isa who sings on many songs on this project singing the chorus “Magic and song and the sound of a drum to the sea to the sky to the land” “Feel the sun on my skin and I’m one with the wind elements in the palm of my hand” This is a song about who we have lost the magic when us because we are too focused on money, technology and getting ahead. We are not as connected with our cultures, our spirituality or our connection to Mother Earth. We are off-balance he talks about in one verse and how we are watching as our world die. He also talks about how the youth have lost their magic to things like pills, insecurities and lyrics. But he says he trying to change that through this music and help to shift the culture. Then Tru comes in and says one of my favorite lyrics of this song “Land that I walk on apart of me…masters had once rid my ancestors harts away” which is so true and we are still out here trying to fix those wounds but if we find that magic again it can save us. “Got to hold to my magic that’s what made me” One of my favorites. Isa really helps to bring this song together. The song ends with Xiuhtezcatl giving one last message to the people about how we might thing as a people we are evolving and progressing but in reality our spirits are dying and the so are the people and the planet. “nothing digital will ever match your heart beat”

“One Day” Feat. Isa

The first song he dropped last year was called One Day. When it first dropped I was obsessed over it and would play it on repeat all the time. I loved his rapping style and just the lyrics of the song. He basically talks about one day making it and his come up and all the people who supported him from day one. I also really love the chorus to which goes: “One day don’t justify we must live this life forever is all we’ve got, One day don’t translate we must meditate this moment is all we’ve got”

“Clockwerk”

This has to be one of if not my favorite song on the album. It is a banger! The beat goes, the lyrics are great and relatable and I just love this song! It starts with an upbeat violin and a shaker in the background. Then Xiuhtezxatl starts spittin. He talks about our oppression as people with money. Isa does the chorus again which rocks “dance to the rhythem of the movement will be in the streets singing bout the revolution” and then Xiuhtezxatl talks about showing up to the protest lookin cut throught. “Keep the hope alive we keep the people mobilized and never let this fire die.” It goes into a break down before Isa really shines on the track. Then Xiuhtezxatl comes back with a some fire lines about working for a dollar but never leaving your country or in some cases city. You work without finding your purpose just trying to get by without making a difference in this world. Such a bop!

“Young” Feat. Nahko, Shailene Woodley

This song is an ode to the youth. It has a violin in the background mixed with some shakers & a drumbeat. Nahko Bear does the chorus of the song which talks about the big bright lights of LA or any city tantalizing you to be apart of that life style. Nahko spits a sick verse on the song about drugs and the addition we have to our phones. He talks about the little boy inside of him being scared but he is a survivor. He talks about his owen coming of age journey that he had when he turned 18 and left home. You can take that journey with Nahko on his 2017 solo album My Name is Bear where he takes you through that journey into the woods and his experiment with drugs. He also talks about the loss of the feminine energy which can be hard for Mother Earth and the Goddess and takes responsibility for the part he plays in the larger picture of the patriot and unbalance between the masculine and feminine. He even talks porn being a way of distorting our perception of women and it being a sickness but to remember he was just a child and to forgive him as he reconciles. Xiuhtezcatl then comes in and talks about the pressure as youth to fit into a box & perfect in a society that is imperfect. He says we don’t celebrate laugher, having a purpose or pursuing your passion. He goes into test scores meaning more than having a purpose, having the weight of the world on your shoulders, not getting sober, those who never felt love and trying to grow up. He talks about the kids who cut themselves and are depressed and how painful it can be for some youth to even live, and how western medicine tries to over medicate the kids. He leaves us with we gotta live or life not take our lives. Then Shailene Woodley comes in with her poem she wrote about humanity. Such an important track!

“Constellations”

This one is a more somber tune to start off with. It starts with the piano and violin. It is about wanting to be a star in the sky. Isa definitely brings it in the singing. This song is about trying to find your way and find you are.

“Limits”

Another bop! It starts off with the sentiment that time is an elution. “We fuckin with the government and takin them to court, theres lies in the stories that the media reports” which is a node to the 21 youth planets who are suing our government over the lack of a plan for the climate for the future generations. “Fight for the cause, die for the dream” He also talks about being more than what we see on our facebook feed. “This life I’m livin ain’t got no limits” He talks about how we grew up on section-8 with second-hand skate shoes and how the youth are watching people go to all these amazing places on instagram but they’re still stuck at home instead of out livin the dream. Another line is we are glorifying the villeins and hating on the heroes. This song has a great piano beat, violin and beat machine. The chorus reminds us that time is an elution and it only keeps going faster due to our lack of enjoyment of every moment.

“Blu Ink”

The second song he dropped was Blue Ink which is a more atmospheric song about living up to everyone’s expectations. From the time Xiuhtzcatl was little people have been looked up to him as the next great savior of the planet. That can be a lot of pressure to put on a little kid and he talks about a lot of that in this song. At the end of the day he is still a kid living life he just took it upon himself to care about our planet since our adults don’t.

“Broken”

This is another timely song about how we are all broken. It goes into a lot of issues we are dealing with like climate change, colonization, police killings, depression of the youth and so much more. He talks about how time is running out but there is still time for us to act on these issues and fix them. He has a line about how people today are not doing their part to fix these issues and how will they be able to tell their kids or the future generation one day that they did nothing to fix the problems we are facing today. The change has to change inside of us and how the change will come from the youth. Xiuhtezcatl also talks about how he makes his music to uplift the people and make them dance. He says he is broken but so is the world but we can fix that.

“Break Free”

Break Free is the answer to Broken on how we can help to fix these problems we are dealing with everyday. He talks about his little brother losing hope but that he is still hopeful and to let him know his silence was important. Xiuhtezcatl’s little brother did a campaign where he was silent for a period of time to get people to start caring more about our climate. He says that you don’t have to have a microphone to make a difference but that we should all make a difference. He then talks about all the youth who are “breaking free” and will go down in history like the Parkland kids and others. He says he is working together with his ancestors. He talks about rappers not being the only ones who chase paper and that politions do the same thing and how our president’s whole campaign is based in hate. Xiutezcatl then talks about all the amazing things people are doing to resist. “The power of the people more powerful than the people in power I believe this can be our finest hour” It ends with Xiuhtezcatl taking one last breath out.

Over All Thoughts:

I love this album! Xiuhtezcatl really put his heart and soul into this album. He is giving out small gems in this album about the revolution, the power of the youth and how we as a society can help to fix the problems we are going through today. He really wants to make people dance and enjoy the music while having a message to his music and I defiantly think he accomplishes this. Plus with such low frequency music and energy on this planet right now this music is so important to help raise our vibrations which is a big way for us to help fix the problems on the planet. He mixes that hip-hop with that indigenous wisdom and the voice of the youth. Honestly he someone I look up to being 18 and just bringing the realness. Also the fact that so many different people older then him support him and are taking him on tour with them like Nahko & Medicine for the People and SOJA. He is an important figure in these times we live in and is really inspiring other youth to do this work along with him. So remember to sage up, keep the hope alive and go into the streets & sing about the revolution! Grade: A+

On October 12th Young the Giant released their 4th studio album Mirror Master which I will be reviewing for you today. I did a review of their last album Home of the Strange which came out in 2016 which you can check out.

Young the Giant Mirror Master First Listen:

Superposition:

First single from their album. I like the lyrics of the song about colliding on spaces that divide us which could be about how we as a country have been so at odds with one another we are forgetting we are human & although we might not always agree on things politically or socially we might have something that we can agree on like music, a movie or a TV show even. I like the banjo in the background and the base. Not my favorite of the album so far but needs time to grow on me.

Simplify:

Off the bat this song when it first comes on is giving me Muse vibes with the heavy electric guitar strums but also gives me Train vibes in the lyrics. Sameer is talking about a relationship and how this every time he looks into his girl’s eyes everything simplifies and just becomes easier to handle. Seems like the simple love song of the album. Seeing as though Sameer just got married since the last album it is a cute song. Another single from the album but again not my favorite at the moment.

Call Me Back:

Simple drum tap starts the song. It is about someone who won’t call him back & how it has affected him since he was a child. It got some kick drums in it and is a nice little tune.

Heat of the Summer:

Starts off with some distorted vocals then goes into a guitar and drum beat. It talks about being a mess and not having his shit together. It talks about wanting to stay in and not go out & wanting to roll up a joint to be able to see in Technicolor. Sameer says all of this is happening in the heat of the summer. I like the lyrics of this song just do to the reliability of it for me as I feel this is how my life is a lot of the time.

Oblivion:

Guitar strum starts the song off and then he starts to talk about how rich kids go and the spend all their money and then they don’t have any skills but that they will be ok when all the money goes away. A piano comes in at a point and then some chimes get played. Sameer talks about nothing being real and how he is in the same boat of being oblivion before some faster drums and guitar kick in.

Darkest Shade of Blue:

Starts off with a melancholy guitar strum and the lead singers airy voice. He starts the song by saying you’re not alone anymore. Sounds like he describing being there for someone who is dealing with anxiety or depression. This song around 2 mins and some change but it is a very beautiful song about being there for someone when they are going through things that are hard and difficult.

Brother’s Keeper:

Songs starts off with a weird instrument I can’t put my figure on what it is called. This song is about wanting to stay in on a Sunday and stay in bed building up a fence around you. Sameer talks about not wanting help from others and wanting to learn to get better. How you can stare off into space and thinking about all the things you have done wrong in your life. In the chorus they talk about the Brother’s Keeper and how he would follow if they lead. He says that maybe he needs help and if they lend out their hand he will take it. I think this is my favorite song off the album so far just due to the reliability of the song and lyrics which talk a lot about mental illness and not doing well.

Glory:

Another song that starts off sad. Starts off with a dark keyboard then goes into a drumbeat and then guitar. Sameer says “Glory Be to God” in the chorus of the song. He talks about maybe going back to college and getting his degree although he figures what will that do for him in the long run and how will it fill the void you fell. He also says the world is ours to take to shoot straight through the target. In the bridge some violins come in. He says he sees the light when he closes his eyes and he will be the light. I think he means he will be what he thought he couldn’t and not let his light be dimmed out. Great song.

Tight Rope:

Starts off with an upbeat drumbeat and then goes into some ‘80s sounding upbeat guitars. One of the most upbeat songs so far on the album. This is about dancing on a tightrope and letting go and having some fun. Not letting all the negativity of life gets to you and just being happy.

Panoramic Girl:

This about a girl who is a memory and all you have are though images in your mind of the girl. Sameer talks about having to stitch together this girl and the life he will never get to know with her. It has a drumbeat & guitar.

You + I:

Starts off with a basic indie guitar strum on an acoustic and drum beat. He talks about wanting a girl to stick around and stay with him. Sameer talks about longevity with his partner and wanting to be with her forever if she will have him.

Mirror Master:

The title track of the album. Another upbeat song on the album. Sameer talks about this person being the lead as they often times are not.

Over All Thoughts:

One of their darker in tone albums then their previous ones. There lyrics are a lot more melancholy and their instrumentation is dark and they only have about two or three songs on the album that are really upbeat and happy. They didn’t go in too crazy a direction this time and mixed that indie/alt-rock vibe they always do with darker lyrics. They talk about the world around us in some songs as well as some songs about mental health & those feelings off loneliness, isolation and anxiety. Gives me very much Twenty One Pilots lyric wise in a few songs mixed with that Young the Giant sound. Over all not a bad album by any means but I think it is going to take me listening more to this album way more for me to really get into it because right now I only liked 5/12 songs and that is pretty low for me. Anyway check out the album it’s a good bop.

“Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! Today I celebrate those ancestors who were on this land first & those who were brought over to become slave labor due to the model of one man. This man helped to create a whole system of colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, slave Labor, rape, stealing, & lying in the western world. Due to his destructive ways other colonizers came over & we have been in a state of harm = right for over 500 years and counting. Today I celebrate the revolution that all my people participate in just by being alive today. You are making your ancestors proud because your still here to fight another day! They have tried time & time again and are still trying to wipe us out but our spirits are too strong for them, we are too connected for them to ever truly kill what lives inside of us. The struggle continues but unity is the only way we will ever win any fight! Stand together!”- Ayisah Yusuf

Yesterday was Indigenous People’s Day and myself and my friend Valarie Proctor hosted an event at the Patuxent Riverkeepers. During our event we had a water ceremony, went on the water and shared some food & sweets together. We even had our event broadcasted on our local CBS news station.

We started the day with the Valarie & myself being interviewed by Scott Broom of our local DC CBS news. We then did our water ceremony which I led with Valarie drumming. I said a prayer and then people said some prayers into some water from the river and then we poured those prayers back into the river. Then anyone who had any prayers to say out loud said their prayers.

Afterwords a few of us went out on the water in kayaks which was a lot of fun.

Then we ate a little food & some sweets together before most people left.

Then a few of us had some s’mores around the fire before the day was over.

Being Indigenous to me is about connecting to your spirit & the spirits of Mother Earth. I am a water baby which is one reason I connect with the turtle so much & I want to keep protecting our water ways because with out water we are nothing! She is so sacred & we must cherish and help to protect her at all cost because she is our life force & she only sends good things to us down her river banks & ocean swells.

Leonard Albert Kravitz (born 1964) is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. His “retro” style incorporates elements of rock, blues, soul, R&B, funk, jazz, reggae, hard rock, psychedelic, pop, folk, and ballads. In addition to singing lead and backing vocals, Kravitz often plays all of the instruments himself when recording.

Early Days:

Kravitz was born in Manhattan, New York, the only child of actress Roxie Roker and NBC television news producer Sy Kravitz. His father is of Russian Jewish descent, and his father was from a Jewish family (with origins from Ukraine; see the Kravits surname). His mother Roxie Roker was of Bahamian and African-American descent, and was from a Christian family. Through his mother, Kravitz is the cousin once removed of television weather presenter Al Roker. During his early years, Kravitz did not grow up in a religious environment. After a spiritual experience when he was 13, he started attending church, becoming a non-denominational Christian.

Kravitz was named after his uncle, Private First Class Leonard M. Kravitz, who was killed in action in the Korean War at the age of 19, while defending against a Chinese attack and saving most of his platoon; he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross but was denied the Medal of Honor. In 2014, he posthumously received the Medal of Honor in a ceremony that awarded it to 23 other servicemen who were passed over because of their ethnicity. Kravitz grew up spending weekdays on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with his parents, attending P.S. 6 for elementary school, and weekends at his grandmother Bessie Roker’s house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Kravitz began banging on pots and pans in the kitchen, playing them as drums at the age of three. At the age of five, he wanted to be a musician. He began playing the drums and soon added guitar. Kravitz grew up listening to the music his parents listened to: R&B, jazz, classical, opera, gospel, and blues. “My parents were very supportive of the fact that I loved music early on, and they took me to a lot of shows,” Kravitz said. Around the age of seven, he saw The Jackson 5 perform at Madison Square Garden, which became his favorite group. His father, who was also a jazz promoter, was friends with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, Miles Davis and other jazz greats. Ellington even played “Happy Birthday” for him one year when he was about 5. He was exposed to the soul music of Motown, Stax, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight, The Isley Brothers, and Gamble and Huff growing up who were key influences on his musical style. Kravitz often went to see New York theater, where his mother worked. His mother encouraged his dreams of pursuing music.

In 1974, the Kravitz family relocated to Los Angeles when Kravitz’s mother landed her role on The Jeffersons.

At his mother’s urging, Kravitz joined the California Boys Choir for three years, where he performed a classical repertoire, and sang with the Metropolitan Opera. He took part in Mahler’s Third Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl. It was in Los Angeles that Kravitz was first introduced to rock music, listening to The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, KISS, Pink Floyd, and The Who. “I was attracted to the cool style, the girls, the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle,” Kravitz said. Kravitz’s other musical influences at the time included Fela Kuti, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis; John Lennon and Bob Marley proved later to be influential as well. Kravitz attended Beverly Hills High School. Maria McKee, actor Nicolas Cage and musician Slash were his classmates. In 1978, Kravitz was accepted into the school’s well-respected music program. He taught himself to play piano and bass, and made friends with Zoro who would later become his long-time collaborator. Kravitz wanted to be a session musician. He also appeared as an actor in television commercials during this time.

Carrer Debut:

With record labels still telling him his music was not “black enough” or “white enough”, Kravitz decided to record an album on his own. Kravitz had met recording engineer/keyboardist/bassist Henry Hirsch in 1985 when recording a demo at his Hoboken, New Jersey recording studio. The two shared an interest in using real instruments and vintage recording equipment, as well as a love of R&B, jazz, and rock. Kravitz would go on to collaborate with Hirsch on most of his albums. Kravitz began working on his debut album with Hirsch over the next year and a half, with Kravitz’s father paying for the studio time. Kravitz met saxophonist Karl Denson and invited him to play on the song, “Let Love Rule”. Kravitz was so impressed with his playing that Denson played on much of the album. Denson toured with Kravitz for the next five years.

In October 1988, after completing most of the recording, Kravitz approached friend Stephen Elvis Smith who had served as the Music Supervisor on Lisa Bonet’s spin-off of The Cosby Show, A Different World. Smith had also worked with Kravitz’ mother, on the hit sitcom The Jeffersons. Kravitz urged Smith to manage his career and assist him in finding a record deal. In less than a month of shopping the recordings, five labels (Warner Bros, Elektra, Geffen, Capitol and Virgin) were in a bidding war for Kravitz. Eventually a deal was made with Virgin Records in January 1989, and signed by Virgin A&R executive Nancy Jeffries. The label was excited about the music he was making, music inspired by his relationship with wife Bonet and their new daughter, Zoe. On Smith’s urging, Kravitz dropped the name Romeo Blue and reclaimed the Lenny Kravitz moniker. About his time as Romeo Blue, Kravitz said, “Ultimately, it got me back to myself. And when I finally did accept myself for myself, music started flowing out of me.”

Kravitz released his début album Let Love Rule on September 6, 1989, a combination of rock and funk with a 1960s vibe. Music critics were mixed: some felt Kravitz was a gifted new artist, others felt he was overpowered by his musical influences. The album was a moderate success in the United States, but became an instant hit outside of the US, especially in Europe. Lisa Bonet directed the debut music video for the title track, “Let Love Rule”. Stephen Smith signed Kravitz with talent booking agency CAA, who soon were fielding offers for Kravitz, first on a club tour, and then in opening slots for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan and David Bowie. Having played essentially all of the instruments on the album, Kravitz had to quickly assemble a touring band to support the Let Love Rule release. They included a childhood friend, Zoro on drums (formerly of Bobby Brown’s band), Adam Widoff (guitar), Lebron Scott (bass guitar, recruited from Curtis Mayfield’s band after seeing them perform in a NYC club), Kenneth Crouch (keyboards) and Karl Denson on saxophone. In May 2009, a 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of “Let Love Rule” was released worldwide by Virgin. The double disk includes a booklet with rare photos, and 18 additional demos, bonus tracks and live recordings. Kravitz launched a LLR(20) tour of Europe and the United States in support of the re-release. And the principal of his career in Brittany, at Rennes.

Carrer Establishment:

In 1990, Kravitz produced the song “Justify My Love” for Madonna, which he co-wrote with Ingrid Chavez. The song, which appeared on her greatest hits album The Immaculate Collection and created controversy because of its explicit video, went to number 1 for two consecutive weeks. When MTV banned the video, the video was quickly made available for sale at record stores, and immediately sold over 500,000 copies.

Kravitz separated from Lisa Bonet in 1991, amid rumors of an affair between him and Madonna. Kravitz has denied any infidelity. Kravitz and Bonet divorced in 1993. In 1991, Kravitz produced the self-titled album Vanessa Paradis for French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis. He played most of the instruments and co-wrote most of the songs on the album.

He also released his second album, Mama Said, which was his first album to reach the Top 40. The songs on the album were about Bonet and dedicated to her, documenting his depression over their breakup. Kravitz’s biggest single yet, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over”, went to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The single “Always on the Run”, a tribute to his mother, featured Slash on guitar.

“Stand by My Woman” and “What Goes Around Comes Around” followed.

Sean Lennon co-wrote and played piano on the song “All I Ever Wanted”.

In 1993, Kravitz wrote “Line Up” for Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and appeared on Mick Jagger’s solo album, Wandering Spirit, in a cover of the Bill Withers soul classic “Use Me”, and played guitar on the title track of David Bowie’s The Buddha of Suburbia.

That year Kravitz also got to work with idols Al Green and Curtis Mayfield.

In 1993, Are You Gonna Go My Way was released, reaching number 12 on the Billboard 200 and Kravitz earned a BRIT Award for best international male artist in 1994. The title trackwon a MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video for the video produced by Mark Romanek, in which Kravitz slung his dreadlocks and wore high-heeled platform boots. During the presentation of the MTV Video Music Awards, he performed the song with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin on bass.

Several singles from the album would follow, including “Believe”, “Is There Any Love In Your Heart”, and “Heaven Help/Spinning Around Over You”. This album was the first to feature guitarist Craig Ross, who has also played on all his subsequent albums. One song, “Eleutheria”, was influenced by the island Eleuthera in The Bahamas where Kravitz built a house and recording studio at that time.

In 1993, he also released the EP Spinning Around Over You, which included four live tracks from his “Universal Love Tour”. A feature documentary about his 1994 tour entitled Alive from Planet Earth was directed by Doug Nichol and released.

In 1994, Kravitz recorded “Main Squeeze” with Teena Marie from her “Passion Play” CD. Lenny also made a video to pay tribute to Teena Marie when she suddenly died on December 26, 2010.

Lenny recorded a funk-rock version of the song “Deuce” for the KISS cover album KISS My Ass: Classic KISS Regrooved. The track featured Stevie Wonder on harmonica and background vocals. This song was one of three radio singles from the album, and was also the album’s lead-off track.

Roxie Roker, Kravitz’s mother, died in California on December 2, 1995, of breast cancer at the age of 66. In 1995, Lenny Kravitz released the album Circus, which went to number 10 on the Billboard chart on the back of his past achievement. However, the album only had two hit singles: “Rock and Roll Is Dead” and “Can’t Get You Off My Mind”.

With 5 (1998), Kravitz embraced digital technology such as Pro Tools and samplers for the first time. Recorded in both his own New York City carriage house, and Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas, Kravitz employed engineer/producer Terry Manning to handle the recording duties.

5 introduced his music to an even wider audience thanks to the hit single “Fly Away” being featured prominently in both car manufacturer and airline commercials. 5 would reach number 28 on the Billboard 200, with “Fly Away” reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, topped both the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts, and reached number 1 in the United Kingdom. He would win the first of his four consecutive Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards of 1999.

Other hits from the album included “If You Can’t Say No”, that was also remixed by dance producer Brian Transeau, and “I Belong to You”. For the “I Belong to You” video Lenny can be seen without his signature locks.

In 1999 he produced and sang with Cree Summer on her solo album Street Faërie.

His cover version of The Guess Who’s hit “American Woman” won him another Grammy at the Grammy Awards of 2000 and helped The Guess Who’s song reach a new audience. Kravitz’s version of the song originally came from the soundtrack of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and was added to 5 as a bonus track in 1999.

Kravitz worked on two songs for Michael Jackson’s Invincible album released in 2001; a snippet of “Another Day” has leaked, and the full version was officially released on the album Michael in 2010.

Kravitz released a Greatest Hits album in 2000. It proved to be his most successful album, reaching #2 on the Billboard 200 and selling nearly 11 million copies worldwide and ultimately becoming one of the most commercially successful albums of the decade.

The single “Again” earned him his third consecutive Grammy for the Best Male Rock Vocal in the Grammy Awards of 2001 and peaked at number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Kravitz also co-wrote the song “God Gave Me Everything” with Mick Jagger in this period, appearing on Jagger’s 2001 solo album Goddess in the Doorway and in the film Being Mick. In 2001, Kravitz participated in a benefit auction for the Red Hot Organization, in conjunction with Amazon.com to increase public AIDS awareness, which ran from February 28 until April 11, 2001. The event featured rare RHO memorabilia and the work of Rolling Stone photographer Mark Seliger.

Early 2000s:

Kravitz released his sixth album Lenny in October 2001. The album was recorded in Miami. Kravitz wrote the song “Bank Robber Man” after the Miami Police Department detained and cuffed him while walking to the gym with his trainer because police stated that he matched the description of a bank robber. Kravitz did not have any identification with him at the time and the police on the scene did not believe that he was indeed Lenny Kravitz. The bank teller who was robbed was then brought to the scene and said Kravitz was not the bank robber. Miami Police later sent officers to Kravitz’s home to apologize for the detention. When asked if he thought the incident was a case of racial profiling, Kravitz said he wasn’t sure although some of the lyrics in the song suggest otherwise.

The first single from the album, “Dig In”, went to number 1 in Argentina and the top 10 in Italy and Portugal. The video for “Dig In” was originally supposed to be shot at the top of the Empire State Building on September 12, 2001 but the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 caused the location to be moved. The video was later shot off the coast Miami. He won his fourth Grammy in 2002.

“Stillness of Heart”, “Believe in Me”, and “If I Could Fall In Love” were subsequent singles from the album.

Kravitz was the subject of a photo book by former chief photographer for Rolling Stone, Mark Seliger. Published in November 2001, Seliger captures Kravitz on tour, with family, with friends and in posed portraits. Jay-Z invited Kravitz to appear on the track “Guns and Roses” on his 2002 The Blueprint: The Gift & the Curse. Kravitz would also join P. Diddy, Pharrell and Loon on the track “Show Me Your Soul” from the Bad Boys II Soundtrack.

In September 2002, Kravitz appeared alongside other rock stars in the episode “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation” of The Simpsons.

In early 2003, Kravitz released the track “We Want Peace” as a download-only track as a protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he performed this alongside famous Iraqi singer Kazem Al Saher at Rock The Vote. The track reached #1 on the world internet download charts and MP3.com download chart.

Kravitz also appeared on Unity, the official album of the 2004 Athens Olympics, and performed a cover of “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” on the album Power of Soul: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix.

Kravitz’s seventh album Baptism was released in May 2004. The first single was “Where Are We Runnin’?”. The single “California” failed to be commercially successful, but “Storm”, featuring Jay-Z, reached the charts. “Calling All Angels” was successful in various countries and a huge hit in Brazil, however it was “Lady” that became the album’s surprise hit, making the US Top 30 and propelling Baptism to gold status.

Also in 2004, he appeared on N.E.R.D’s album Fly or Die. From March 2005, Kravitz toured all over the world with the tour Electric Church, which ended at the Brixton Academy, London in July 2005. Kravitz served as the opening act for Aerosmith who are long-term friends of Kravitz on their fall 2005 tour. The tour began on October 30 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The night before that tour started, October 29, 2005, Lenny’s father, TV producer Seymour “Sy” Kravitz, died. During that first show, Lenny broke the news to the stunned crowd and stated it was not a time to be sad, but rather a time to celebrate because he is now in Heaven. Lenny then dedicated Let Love Rule to his father. That tour was so successful that it was extended through February 25, 2006 and ended in Anaheim, California.

Late 2000s:

In January 2006, Kravitz contributed “Breathe” to absoluttracks, a project sponsored by Absolut Vodka. This song was re-mixed by ten musical producers and distributed via the internet. Kravitz appeared in the audience of Madonna’s Confessions Tour (2006) during numerous shows. He later joined Madonna live on stage to play guitar on the song, “I Love New York,” at the last of four Paris shows. Kravitz founded a design firm named Kravitz Design, stating if he hadn’t been a musician he would have been a designer. Kravitz Design, focused on interior and furniture design, has designed residential spaces, as well as a chandelier for the crystal company Swarovski, named “Casino Royale.”

On July 7, 2007, Kravitz performed at the Brazilian leg of Live Earth in Rio de Janeiro, making him one of three major international rock stars to perform two huge free concerts at the world-famous Copacabana Beach along with Macy Gray and the Rolling Stones. Kravitz had already played there on March 21, 2005, drawing 300,000 people on a concert of his own. The Live Earth concert, with eight other acts on the bill, including Pharrell and Macy Gray, took 400,000 to the beach. Also in 2007, Kravitz released a version of “Cold Turkey” by John Lennon on the charity CD Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. Kravitz also spent time recording his latest album, It Is Time for a Love Revolution, released February 5, 2008. On September 25, 2007, the Fats Domino tribute album “Goin’ Home ; A Tribute To Fats Domino” was released. Kravitz was on the song “Whole Lotta Lovin'” along with Rebirth Brass Band, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker.

Kravitz performed at the Grey Cup halftime show in Toronto at the Rogers Centre on November 25, 2007, where the Saskatchewan Roughriders beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23–19. The original video for “I’ll Be Waiting” was shot in Central Park in New York City with Marc Webb directing but that video was later shelved and a new version, which Kravitz co-directed with Philip Andelman, was filmed in Lenny’s New York City recording studio. The video premiered on VH1’s Top 20 Countdown at number 3.

On January 17, 2008, Kravitz embarked on a 9 city mini-tour to promote his new album It Is Time for a Love Revolution. The tour started in Santa Monica, California and ended in New York City on February 1. The tour was done in association with Myspace and called the “Get on the Bus” tour. At each stop on the tour, they would pick up one contest winner and their guest and they rode on the “Love Revolution” bus until the end of the tour. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, a close friend of Lenny’s would appear at The Orpheum Theater in Boston. The New York City winner, Tyrone Good was presented a train ticket from Penn Station to travel to Philadelphia and rode with the tour the rest of the way starting in Philadelphia (The Electric Factory), Boston (The Orpheum Theater), and finally New York City (The Hammerstein Ballroom). Ryan Neuerburg, the San Francisco winner, embarked on almost the entire tour with his father, Tom Neuerburg. The winners were featured in the YRB February Edition alongside Lenny Kravitz in a magazine pull-out. The photo shoot took place at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on stage. The winner’s pull out was featured in another issue of YRB which had Lil’ Wayne on the cover.

On February 11, 2008, Kravitz was admitted to Miami Hospital suffering from severe bronchitis. He had been suffering from a series of severe respiratory tract infections since mid-January, and the illness developed into bronchitis. Kravitz’s illness had forced him to postpone Canadian dates and his trip to Europe to promote his album It Is Time for a Love Revolution. On March 19, 2008 he canceled the South American part of his tour due to the same illness. The decision affected planned concerts in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. In Argentina Kravitz had a performance in the biggest rock festival there, Quilmes Rock Fest. On July 15, 2008, Lenny was honored in Milan, Italy with the key to the city in a special toast ceremony for his work with the United Nations Millennium Campaign to end world poverty.

Kravitz made his feature film acting debut in Precious which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009.

During the Italian leg of his 53 date Let Love Rule (20)09 European tour, Kravitz had been instructed to cancel some shows due to a bad bout of bronchitis. Under strict orders from his doctor, the singer was told to rest so that he could make a quick recovery and return to the stage for the rest of his tour. Shows scheduled for Rome on June 5 and Brescia on June 6 were postponed to late July.

Early 2010s:

Kravitz’s next album, tentatively titled Funk, was tentatively re-titled Negrophilia and was due out sometime in 2010. This is believed to be a project that Kravitz has been working on since 1997. Some of the original tracks for Funk were recorded while he was in New Orleans at Allen Toussaint’s studio while taking a break for several months from recording in New York City. A video on Kravitz’s Twitter page shows him working on one of the songs for the album, called “Super Love”, in his GTS studios in the Bahamas. Another video shows him working on another track titled “Life Ain’t Never Been Better Than It Is Now” in his GTS Studios. On his Twitter page, Kravitz said that the album title was Negrophilia but then “felt like something else”. Eventually, the album was later named Black and White America. The album was released on August 22, 2011 in Europe and August 30, 2011 in the U.S.

On February 20, 2011, the first single “Come on Get It” was released. On June 6, 2011, the second single “Stand” was released.

It was announced that Kravitz would be supporting U2 on their 360 Tour on the second North American leg in 2010. Kravitz agreed to support them for four shows. Though the shows were postponed until 2011, Kravitz remained committed for four of the shows. In June 2010 it was announced that Kravitz would guest star on an episode of the upcoming season of Entourage.

On December 1, 2011, Kravitz was honored with one of the highest cultural awards in France when he was made an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by French cultural minister Frederic Mitterrand in Paris. Kravitz stated he was “particularly touched” to receive the award in France as his success in the country pre-dated his success in the United States and still enjoys great record sales in the country today. Kravitz joins other American recipients such as Martin Scorsese, George Clooney, and Bob Dylan. On February 26, 2012, he performed at the Daytona International Speedway (several songs carried live on Fox) for the Daytona 500, the opening race of the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

A sample of “Are You Gonna Go My Way” was used in American singer Chris Willis’s single “Too Much In Love”, released on August 16, 2011.

Lenny Kravitz played the part of Katniss’ creative stylist, Cinna, in the first two Hunger Games films, The Hunger Games released on March 23, 2012 and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire released on November 22, 2013.

Late 2010s:

On September 23, 2014, Lenny Kravitz released his tenth studio album Strut on his own Roxie Records via Kobalt Label Services. The single “The Chamber” was released on June 24, 2014, followed by “Sex” on August 6 and “New York City” on October 21. along with the title track on February 17 and then the final single “The Pleasure And The Pain” on June 26.

On February 1, 2015, Kravitz performed alongside Katy Perry at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show.

On August 4, 2015, during a guitar solo at a concert in Stockholm, Kravitz squatted down, causing his leather pants to rip. Because Kravitz was not wearing underwear, his genitals were briefly exposed to the audience. He did not face any legal repercussions from the incident.

As a designer, Kravitz launched a furniture collection in partnership with CB2 in 2015.

In 2015 he became a furniture designer for the first time ever launching a collection of furniture products marketed under the label cb2 x kravitz design through retailer CB2.In 2016 he guest starred on the FX TV show Better Things playing the part of Mel Trueblood. In 2017 he earned a spot on the Fox Television series Star playing the part of Roland Crane in his first recurring television role.

In April 2018, Kravitz signed with BMG Rights Management for a new worldwide publishing music deal to go with his new album Raise Vibration. BMG had acquired Kravitz’s music publishing rights in 2013, as part of Virgin Music Publishing. Kravitz will commence his Raise Vibration world tour, in fall 2018, and just released his 11th studio album, Raise Vibration, on September 7, 2018. In a Rolling Stone interview it was confirmed that Kravitz had already begun work on a follow-up to Raise Vibration, as a possible soundtrack to a future film project.

My Connection to Lenny Kravitz:

I started listening to Lenny Kravitz in 2007 when I was 15 & a freshmen in high school. At the time I had a little white iPod shuffle so it only held a few songs on it & since the internet was a newer thing in my life although I had used in the past a little I only really listened to singles from artist back then. I got into him off his album 5 that came out back in 1998. Some of my favorite songs from him come off that album like Thinking of You, I Belong to You, Again & my favorite song of him of all time Fly Away. I also listened to a few single off his album Mama Says like It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over as well as his cover of American Women. Then in 2011 when his album Black & White America came out I listened to a few songs off that like Sunflower ft. Drake, Superlove/Superlove remix by Avcii RIP & Black and White America. Over the past few years I have been getting even more into Lenny’s other albums like Mama Says, Circus, Are You Gonna Go My Way? and especially his 1988 debut album Let Love Rule which just celebrated its 30th anniversary Thursday September 6th. I also have always just loved the energy that Lenny gave off in his music & just in his personality. I especially like his younger years when he was making Let Love Rule & Mama Says plus his relationship then to Lisa Bonet. They actually have a really incredible relationship as brother & sister now even 25 years after their break up which is awesome.

Also back in high school when you were a black kid who liked rock music you only had a few contemporary people you could look to mainstream that were black making rock music was Lenny Kravitz. And Lenny is 54 still looks amazing & able to rock it better than most in their 20s just remember that. Basically I just love Lenny Kravitz and the beautiful message he has been spreading for 30 years of peace, love and good vibes.

Raise Vibration Review:

We Can Get It All Together

Starts of slow with some organ sounds then a fierce drum beat comes on which leads into a guitar strum. This is a song dealing with religion but also talks about how we need to get it together by looking into ourselves & fixing what is needed in us. There are a lot of things us as humans do that is toxic and hurtful to both us and Mother Earth. He talks about us doing all those things but that there is hope that we can fix these things that we are doing. Song ends with a little acoustic guitar strum & some feedback.

Low

Low was my favorite of the two singles that came out and is very funky & ‘70s inspired. It’s got those Michael Jackson adlibs that I love which gives even more of a funky old school vibe. It’s got that dope drum beat all over it. Lenny speaks about not wanting his fame & sexuality to cloud his realness in a relationship. For the person to not look at Lenny as just this celebrity to be with but to see the real person inside him. I think most people want this in their life. For their next relationship to not look at them in another relationship but to just look at them as the person they are. It’s ends with MJ’s famous scream which I think ties the song together perfect. This is a pure bop!

Who Really Are the Monsters?

This song sounds very ‘80s & very Prince inspired. Very much a politically charged song about war & how we are at war with other people but also at war with ourselves. We are not willing to face ourselves & stop the bad behavior we have which is also directed to humanity. What we do that is harmful to ourselves is also harmful to our Mother Earth & all her creatures. But we as humans don’t want to own up to that harmful behavior we want to own blame it on other people. We want to blame everything on our politicians, police or celebrities but not own our bad behavior. Yes these people are doing horrible things and making the vibrations on Earth very low but the average person does come pretty bad stuff as well even if we are not subconscious about it and we need to own up to it. So he asks who really are the monsters? I think he opens up a great conversation about our responsibility to the look inside ourselves and fix our own demons. A great Caribbean drum brake is in the middle of the song & Lenny says we need to start communicating with ourselves but also each other. It’s got all the funk of a great ‘80s record with the sax, guitar, break beats & drums. It sounds very much like a song if he were making this kind of music back in the late ’80s he could have made.

Raise Vibration

It’s starts of sparse with an electric guitar & Lenny singing taking pauses between each few lyrics before the drum beat comes in. Then in the middle when he says Raise Vibration a two count drum beat comes in & then goes into a very ‘60s vibe. This song is about raising our vibration & being better people making our energy higher & put everything into love. Doing things like meditation, praying or just staying in a positive mind-set will help you to raise your vibrations. In an interview Lenny did with I Heart Radio he talks about the media we consume or the music we listen to or the environment we are around can be a way of clouding our energy so we need to be careful about the things we do & consume. He talks of Jesus, MLK & Gondi leading & serving through love which is so important. It ends with a group called Northern Cree playing traditional Indigenous music of Turtle Island at the end which is awesome! A very great anthem that I think we should all be listening to and really helping ourselves and others to raise our vibration.

Johnny Cash

One of my favorite songs on the album. It’s starts with a steel guitar sound before going into a love song about needing love like the love Johnny Cash & June Carter gave him when he lost his mother back in ‘95 to cancer. He said he had just come home from his Japanese tour at the time & went to the hospital to see his mom. He stayed there for a day before going home which he was staying at Rick Rubin’s house where Johnny Cash & June Carter were also staying to finish recording an album. He says he went home to take a shower & eat but while in transit his mom passed away. He gets the phone when he walks in the door and is stunned. As he stands at the bottom of the stairs in the house Johnny & June come down the stairs and say hello to Lenny and ask him what is wrong. Lenny says his mom just died & Johnny & June just grab him and give him the biggest hug ever and just hold him sending him so much light, love & good vibes. Lenny writes this song from his perspective at the time to a lover. He wants this person to hold him like Johnny & June did and send him that energy when they are together. It’s a very beautiful song both lyrically & instrumentally. Sweet love song!

Here to Love

Starts off on piano kind of somber but then goes into his lyrics of unity, strength, doing what’s right, & loving each other like your own. To think twice before you hurt another person because you don’t know what they’re going through and that judgement is wrong & we should lead with love. A song of hope for the future for those who want to hear this message.

It’s Enough!

His most politically charged song on the record he goes off! He talks about everything from racism, to how we treat the earth, to the food we eat, to the chemicals in the air and so much more. For a lot of the song we get a lot of the political, social & environmental things that are happening everyday in this world. It kind of gives off a conspiracy vibe a little which I’m here for because most conspiracies for the most part end up coming true. He talks about a system that we can’t trust & how we are all just being fooled. When he says that all of this crazy, harmful things being done everyday is enough I agree it’s enough of all the bad things in the world we need more good & positivity. It’s a very important song I feel for this time on Earth as humans.

5 More Days ‘Til Summer

Gives of a Mexican summertime vibe with words of the hard-working humans who needs a summer day to take a vacation. It’s a cute little song with guitar, piano & a little bit of drums. There is a cute little kid count down on the bridge as well which I love.

The Majesty of Love

Very ‘70s about searching for love. Got that jazzy funk vibe about in during the break down with the sax, horns, chime instrumentals, Caribbean drums, & rhythm guitar.

Gold Dust

Starts off with Lenny’s big vocals then goes into a piano, drums & electric guitar. Then goes into a small guitar solo before slowing back down to the piano then going back up to the guitar & drums. It talks about basically that not everything that glitters is gold. That material things are not always the most important things in the world but our connection to each other and Mother Earth. Buying the next greatest technology and spending a bunch of money on this or that for no real reason but to keep up with the Jones and not focused on our family, friends and community.

Ride

Simple acoustic strum then some very ‘70s futuristic sounds get played. He talks about looking into a persons spirit & knowing this person forever in his mind. I think this song is about being his soul mate. This is a beautiful love song to either a lover or could be an ode to his daughter Zoe. He calls this person his angel. It’s so cute!

I’ll Always Be Inside Your Soul

This mixes a few trap beats with a soul guitar rhythm. This is another love song. He says he will always be in this persons heart & soul and that he watches them & is in their mind. I think this is his ode to Zoe from a father to a daughter as she lives her life & he lives his to know he is always there with her. There is even a mbira/kalimba sound at the end that fads our the song & album. Beautiful way to end the album!

Till Next Time Remember to Raise Vibration!

]]>https://iceturtlegirl.blog/2018/09/14/music-review-lenny-kravitz-raise-vibration-neohippie-letloverule-raisevibration-rockmusicisblackmusic/feed/129351RIP Arthea Franklin & the High Lack of Actual Musical Talent in the 21st Century #Undergroundhttps://iceturtlegirl.blog/2018/08/23/rip-arthea-franklin-the-high-lack-of-actual-musical-talent-in-the-21st-century-underground/
https://iceturtlegirl.blog/2018/08/23/rip-arthea-franklin-the-high-lack-of-actual-musical-talent-in-the-21st-century-underground/#respondThu, 23 Aug 2018 19:21:04 +0000https://iceturtlegirl.blog/?p=29612Thursday August, 16th the Queen of Soul and the voice of a lifetime Aretha Franklin passed away at the age of 76.

Her death comes after many other legends like Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney, Etta James, Chuck Berry and others have died over the past 10 years. Yes we still have legends out there in the world like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross & Patti LaBelle which is amazing but I will say that we don’t have as much young talent at the same level as these super stars. For some reason today the talent that is out in music is not held to the highest level as they were back when I, my siblings or my parents were growing up.

Today any artist can come out & put out music then go on tour and suck. They go on tour and their vocals are not the same as they are on record. Now of course they are not supposed to sound like on record but at least close to what they put down on record if not better.

With people like Aretha Franklin, Mariah or Whitney they sounded out of this world on record but then when they performed live they were on a whole other level.

Today that is not even a thing because on the record they make these artist sound so perfect due to vocal help like auto-tune & the re-recording they are now able to do in the studio thanks to technology. And in some ways this is a great thing but in other ways its making these artist lazy and complacent to the point where some of them have to have so much backing tracks or back up singers to help them get through a song live.

Older singers where able to stand up on stage by themselves with a mike and a spotlight and sing their hearts out and make the crowd feel it. Today’s artist just are not held to the same standard as back in the day so they’re performances are not at the same level as our legends.

This also has me thinking too that the lyrical content combined with their singing is not the same. Today soul/R&B has become so watered down commercially due to bad lyrics and worse singers. Now and days R&B singers wanna be hip-hop artist who sing. They wanna have trap beats and talk about the same sex, money, drugs like their hip-hop counter parts (plus their all so nasally).

While there has been soul/R&B artist that have have taken on hip-hop culture in the past and it works really well like Mary J. Blidge, Jodeci, Bel-Biv-Divo, Montel Jordan, even Erykah Badu but those artist where already very strong singers and took hip-hop culture in more of their style and some of the beats they used but you could tell it was still soul/R&B. Today due to rappers thinking they can sing & R&B artist thinking they can rap its blurring the lines a lot and making it hard for the listener to understand what they are listening to. Even take a Lauryn Hill in her prime she was a R&B singer & she was a MC. With Lauryn though you were able to tell which lane she was in when she was in. On the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill you would have a song like Lost Ones but then next have a song like Nothing Even Matters. One was a lyrical master piece and the other was a neo-soul dute with D’Angelo.

Anyway soul/R&B artist are just not the same today as they even where in the ’90s. But I think this also has to do with the fact that artist from my parents generation were still relevant in the ’90s and were working with these young R&B artist at the time. The perfect example of this is the video for Whitney’s cover of Chaka Khan’s song “I’m Every Women” where she was singing Chaka’s song which came out in the late ’70s then Whitney came out in the mid to late ’80s & she had TLC in the video who were part of the new R&B wave of the ’90s. That was three different generations of R&B in one song/video.

Whitney worked with Brandy. Aretha Franklin worked with Lauryn Hill. These soul/R&B artist from older generations were working with these newer artist and trying to help the culture continue. I don’t see that as much today. Artist from the ’90s who benefited from the help they got from our legends are not putting in the same work with these newer R&B artist & thats why most of them are not as great. Most of these R&B legends in what I call the last great decade before technology & the internet took over are either inactive, got left in the ’90s or are still going but don’t influence or work with the next generation.

So the question really is do we in the 21st century have any legends in the making? Do we have artist & singers who care about the music & the art and craft of it in the way our legends did? Can these folks sing or play an instrument? Or is it all just flash, good dancing (and some of y’all can’t even dance either), a fire beat & computer programing? In the past people used to be out here dancing, singing and serving face & body all while having meaningful lyrics. Do we still have this in our 2010 hyper technology internet world were it feels like you don’t need to have talent to sell records or even get put on? You don’t have to be able to sing or dance you just have to have a pretty face and lip-sync. And the worst part of all of this is the youth of today think this is normal because there aren’t that many artist who care about the craft anymore. Very little artist still play instruments like piano, drums or guitar.

So commercially there are not that many if any artist who really care about the craft of making real music but in the more underground or in other places in the mainstream that are over looked there are a few artist who are still trying to keep this music alive.

Here are a few in different black music genera (or at least still seen as black music) & artist from the 2010s who are working it.

Soul/R&B:

Leon Bridges:

Todd Michael Bridges (born July 13, 1989) known professionally as Leon Bridges, is an American gospel and soul singer, songwriter and record producer from Fort Worth, Texas. He is best known for his song “Coming Home”, which received regular airplay and was also a Top 10 Most Viral Track on Spotify. Bridges’ debut album, also titled Coming Home, was released on June 23, 2015, on Columbia Records.

H.E.R.:

Gabriella ‘Gabi’ Wilson (born June 27, 1997), better known by her stage name H.E.R. (acronym for “Having Everything Revealed”), is an American singer from Vallejo, California. She signed to RCA Records and has released two extended plays under the label: H.E.R. Volume 1 (2016) and H.E.R. Volume 2 (2017). Her identity was previously unknown as she preferred to remain anonymous and only be represented by her music. Her debut, the seven-song EP H.E.R. Vol. 1, was released on September 9, 2016 by RCA Records. It made iTunes’ Best of 2016 R&B/Soul Albums list, with the track “Losing” making the iTunes Best R&B/Soul Singles list. The release also included a cover of Drake’s “Jungle”.

Daniel Caesar:

Ashton Simmonds (born April 5, 1995), better known by his stage name Daniel Caesar, is a Canadian singer and songwriter. After independently building a following through the release of two critically acclaimed EPs Praise Break (2014) and Pilgrim’s Paradise (2015), Caesar released his debut album Freudian in August 2017, which also garnered widespread critical acclaim.

Caesar received widespread critical acclaim for his debut 2014’s EP “Praise Break”, which was ranked number 19 on the ’20 Best R&B Albums of 2014′ by Rolling Stone. His body of work is influenced by religion, which played a large role in his upbringing, and unrequited love.

His breakout single “Get You” amassed over 10 million streams on Apple Music since its October 2016 release. According to his management, the singer’s catalog has garnered over 20 million global streams on Apple Music. According to NPR, as of June 2018 his three most-streamed songs have a combined 249 million streams on Spotify. On August 25, 2017, Caesar released his debut album Freudian, which included singles “Get You”, “We Find Love”, and “Blessed”. The album was a shortlisted finalist for the 2018 Polaris Music Prize.

Khalid:

Khalid Donnel Robinson (born February 11, 1998), known mononymously as Khalid, is an American singer and songwriter. He is signed to Right Hand Music Group and RCA Records. His debut single, “Location”, was released in July 2016 and peaked at number 15 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and was later certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). His debut studio album, American Teen, was released on March 3, 2017.

Moses Sumney:

Moses Frimpong Sumney (born May 19, 1990) is an American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. His self-recorded EP, Mid-City Island, was released in 2014 to positive reception. Sumney has performed as an opening act for Solange, Sufjan Stevens, and Erykah Badu.[1] Sumney released another 5-song EP in 2016, titled Lamentations; his first full-length album, Aromanticism, was released in September 2017.

SZA:

Solána Imani Rowe (born November 8, 1990), known professionally as SZA (/ˈsɪzə/SIZ-ə) is an American singer and songwriter. SZA was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, later relocating to Maplewood, New Jersey. In October 2012, SZA self-released her debut EP, See.SZA.Run, which she then followed up with her second EP, titled S, in April 2013. In July 2013, it was revealed that she had signed to the hip hop record label Top Dawg Entertainment, through which she released Z, her third EP and first retail release, in April 2014.

SZA’s debut studio album, Ctrl, was released on June 9, 2017, to universal acclaim from music critics. It debuted at number three on the US Billboard Top 200 and was eventually certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). SZA is a neo soul singer whose music has been described as alternative R&B, with elements of soul, hip hop, minimalist R&B, cloud rap, witch house and chillwave. SZA’s lyrics are described as “unravelling,” that revolve around themes of sexuality, nostalgia, and abandonment. SZA cites a variety of artists as influences, including Ella Fitzgerald, Meelah, Björk, Jamiroquai, and Lauryn Hill, among others. SZA also takes influence from non-musical artists, including filmmaker Spike Lee.

Mumu Fresh:

Maimouna Youssef is an American singer and rapper. She is of Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and African American heritage. She performs music under the stage name Mumu Fresh.

Youssef earned a Grammy nomination for her vocal contribution to “Don’t Feel Right” by The Roots in 2007. She performed in the 2007 hip-hop documentary film Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Youssef released an EP, Black Magic Woman, and a full album, The Blooming, in 2011. With DJ Dummy, she released the album Vintage Babies featuring Common, Irvin Washington, and Malik Yusef in 2017. Youssef represented the Washington DC chapter of the Recording Academy at the 2015 ‘GRAMMY Festival at Sea’. She performed an NPR Tiny Desk concert with August Greene in February 2018, and her own set in July 2018.

Jorja Smith:

Jorja Alice Smith (born 11 June 1997) is an English singer from Walsall, West Midlands. She has independently released numerous singles and one extended play, Project 11 (2016). She has collaborated with other artists, most notably with Drake, Stormzy, and Kali Uchis, as well as producer Preditah. In 2018, Smith won the Brit Critics’ Choice Award and released her debut studio album Lost & Found in June.

Ibeyi:

Ibeyi is a French (with Cuban and Venezuelan origins) musical duo consisting of twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz. The duo sings in English, French, Spanish and Yoruba, a Nigerian language spoken in West Africa by their ancestors before being taken to Cuba as slaves in the 1700s. Lisa, the lead singer, plays the piano; Naomi plays the traditional Peruvian/Cuban percussion instruments cajón and Batá drum.

In the Yoruba language, Ibeyi (Ìbejì) means “twins”. Their music has elements of Yoruba, French and Afro-Cuban, and fuses jazz with beats, samples with traditional instruments.

Frank Ocean:

Christopher Francis Ocean (born Christopher Edwin Breaux; October 28, 1987) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, rapper, and photographer.

Ocean began his musical career as a ghostwriter, prior to joining hip hop collective Odd Future in 2010.[4] His contributions to the group was critically lauded, and allowed Ocean to release his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra a year later. The mixtape also saw critical success, and generated the single “Novacane”, which peaked at number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was later certified platinum. This success allowed Ocean to secure a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings in 2012.

Ocean released his debut studio album, Channel Orange, in July 2012, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200and was soon certified platinum. The album was also a resounding critical success, and won Ocean his first Grammy Award, for Best Urban Contemporary Album. The album also contained the singles “Thinkin Bout You”, “Pyramids”, and “Sweet Life”, with the former also gaining him a nomination for Record of the Year at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.

His second album, Blonde, was released in 2016, and was subject to controversy after Ocean endured protracted contract disputes with Def Jam, which led to the album suffering repeated pushbacks and delays. Upon release, Blonde debuted at number one in several countries, and was also highly acclaimed by critics. The album was soon certified platinum, and contained the single “Nikes”, which was also certified platinum.

Ocean’s idiosyncratic musical style and contributions to the medium have credited him with revitalizing R&B to encourage innovation. Ocean has also gained critical acclaim for his introspective and elliptical songwriting, unconventional production techniques, and vocal range. His distinctive sound and style has influenced numerous artists of various music genres, and he is considered one of the most acclaimed artists of the 21st century.

The Weeknd:

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (born 16 February 1990), known by his stage name The Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer.

Tesfaye anonymously uploaded several songs to YouTube under the name “The Weeknd” in 2010 and released the critically acclaimed mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence in 2011. The mixtapes were later remastered and rereleased on the compilation album Trilogy (2012), after he signed with Republic Records and created his own record label XO.

Tesfaye has had three number-one releases (Beauty Behind the Madness in 2015, Starboy in 2016, and My Dear Melancholy in 2018) and another top-two release (Kiss Land in 2013) on the US Billboard 200. He has earned eight top-ten entries on the Billboard Hot 100: “Love Me Harder” with Ariana Grande; “Earned It”; “I Feel It Coming”; “Pray for Me” with Kendrick Lamar; “Call Out My Name”; and the number one singles “The Hills”, “Can’t Feel My Face”, and “Starboy”. In 2015, Tesfaye became the first artist to simultaneously hold the top three positions on the Billboard Hot R&B Songs chart with “Can’t Feel My Face”, “Earned It”, and “The Hills”. Tesfaye has won three Grammy Awards and nine Juno Awards.

THEY.:

THEY. is an American R&B duo consisting of Dante Jones and Drew Love from Los Angeles, California signed to Mind of a Genius Records. The duo started their career in 2015, releasing debut extended play, Nü Religion, which received critical acclaim. In the same year THEY. released the commercially successful single “Working for It” in collaboration with Zhu and Skrillex. In 2016, the duo started touring with singer Bryson Tiller. In February 2017, the duo released their debut studio album, Nü Religion: Hyena.

Jazz:

Kamasi Washington:

Kamasi Washington (born February 18, 1981) is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, producer, and bandleader. Washington is known mainly for playing tenor saxophone.

Kamasi Washington was born in Los Angeles, California, on February 2, 1981 to musical parents and educators, and was raised in Inglewood, California. He is a graduate of the Academy of Music of Alexander Hamilton High School in Beverlywood, Los Angeles.[1] Washington next enrolled in UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology, where he began playing with faculty members such as Kenny Burrell, Billy Higgins and band leader/trumpeter Gerald Wilson. Washington features in the album Young Jazz Giants in 2004. He has played along with a diverse group of musicians including Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Horace Tapscott, Gerald Wilson, Lauryn Hill, Nas, Snoop Dogg, George Duke, Chaka Khan, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Mike Muir, Francisco Aguabella, the Pan Afrikaan People’s Orchestra and Raphael Saadiq.

Washington ventured into big band music when he joined the Gerald Wilson Orchestra for their 2006 album In My Time. Washington played saxophone on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. His debut solo recording, The Epic, was released in May 2015 to critical acclaim. His second studio album, Heaven and Earth, was released in June 2018, with a companion EP titled The Choice released a week later.

Rock ‘n Roll/Blues:

Gary Clark Jr.:

Gary Lee Clark Jr. (born February 15, 1984) is an American musician from Austin, Texas. He is best known for his fusion of blues, rock and soul music with elements of hip hop. Clark has shared the stage with many legends of rock and roll, including Eric Clapton, B. B. King and the Rolling Stones.

Naia Izumi:

Naia Izumi creates prolifically and passionately, combining soulful vocals and
complex rhythms toproduce the rich, unique sound she describes as elegant,
rhythmic, bizarre, articulated, guitar-based music with pop “sensitivity.” A natural
born musician, Naia has been creating music for as long as she can remember and
her songs resonate with people all over the world. – Kat Popovic

Combo Package:

(Rock, Funk, Soul, Jazz)

Janelle Monae:

Janelle Monáe Robinson (/dʒəˈnɛlmoʊˈneɪ/; born December 1, 1985) is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, actress, and model. She is signed to her own imprint, Wondaland Arts Society, and Atlantic Records. After her first unofficial studio album, The Audition, she publicly debuted with a conceptual EP titled Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), which peaked at number 115 on the Billboard 200 in the United States.

In 2010, Monáe released her critically acclaimed first full-length studio album The ArchAndroid, a concept album sequel to her first EP. It was released by Bad Boy Records and reached the number 17 spot on the Billboard 200. Monáe featured as a guest vocalist in “We Are Young” by fun., which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, her first appearance in the chart. In August 2012, Monáe became a CoverGirl spokeswoman. Her second studio album, The Electric Lady, was released in September 2013, to critical acclaim. In 2016, Monáe had roles in two feature films, Hidden Figuresand Moonlight.

Monáe’s third studio album, Dirty Computer, was released on April 27, 2018, preceded by the singles “Django Jane”, “Make Me Feel”, “I Like That”, and “Pynk.” Monáe has received six Grammy Award nominations.

The Internet:

The Internet is an American band from Los Angeles, California. It currently consists of Syd, Matt Martians, Patrick Paige II, Christopher Smith, and Steve Lacy. They have released four studio albums and three extended plays since their formation in late 2011. The band’s 2015 album Ego Death was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album.

Phony Ppl:

Phony Ppl is a musical group based in Brooklyn, New York. Originally founded in 2010 with 9 members, the current members are Elbee Thrie (vocals), Elijah Rawk (lead guitar), Matt “Maffyuu” Byas (drums), Aja Grant (keyboard), and Bari Bass (bass guitar).

Members of Phony Ppl met in high school. Elbee (Robert Booker) and Aja first formed the group, with Dyme-A-Duzin (Donnovan Blocker), Bari Bass (Omar Grant), Elijah Rawk, Ian Bakerman, Maffyuu, and Sheriff PJ joining later. In 2012, they released the album Phonyland.

In January 2015, they released the album Yesterday’s Tomorrow. The album peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Heatseekers Album chart. The album also peaked at number 15 on the Trending 140 chart and at number 7 on the Emerging Artists chart. They released the single “This Must Be Heaven” in November 2016. They made their first television appearance on June 9, 2015 on Jimmy Kimmel Live! performing “Trap Queen” with Fetty Wap.

Miguel:

Miguel Jontel Pimentel (born October 23, 1985) is an American singer and songwriter. Raised in Los Angeles, he began pursuing a music career at age thirteen. After signing to Jive Records in 2007, Miguel released his debut studio album, All I Want Is You, in November 2010. Although it was underpromoted upon its release, the album became a sleeper hit and helped Miguel garner commercial standing.

After Jive’s dissolution in 2011, he moved to RCA Records and released his second studio album, Kaleidoscope Dream in 2012 to critical acclaim. In June 2015, Miguel released his third studio album, Wildheart, which also received critical acclaim. His fourth studio album, War & Leisure, was released in December 2017 to further acclaim. Miguel incorporates R&B, funk, hip hop, rock and electronic styles into his music, and has been compared to vocalists Babyface and Prince.

Anderson .Paak:

Brandon Paak Anderson (born February 8, 1986), better known by his stage name Anderson Paak (stylized as Anderson .Paak), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, drummer and record producer from Oxnard, California. He released his debut album, O.B.E. Vol. 1 in 2012, under the pseudonym Breezy Lovejoy. He went on to release Venice in 2014, under his current moniker. Paak followed with Malibu, in 2016,[4] which received a nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the Grammy Awards. Apart from his solo career, Paak is also one-half of NxWorries, alongside record producer Knxwledge. He is accompanied by the band The Free Nationals, who play a variety of instruments such as electric guitar, bass, piano, keyboards and drums and also serve as backing vocalists.

Tank & the Bangers:

Tank and the Bangas is an American funk and soul musical group, based from New Orleans, Louisiana. They won the 2017 NPR Tiny Desk Contest. Members of Tank and the Bangas met at a New Orleans open mic show called Liberation Lounge at Blackstar Cafe and Books in the Algiers section of New Orleans and formed the group in 2011.

Alabama Shakes:

Alabama Shakes is an American blues rock band formed in Athens, Alabama, in 2009. The band currently consists of lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, and drummer Steve Johnson. The group rose to prominence in the early 2010s with their distinctive and soulful roots rock sound.

The band began their career touring and performing at bars and clubs around the Southeast for two years while honing their sound and writing music. They recorded their debut album, Boys & Girls, with producer Andrija Tokic in Nashville while still unsigned. Online acclaim led ATO Records to sign the band, which released Boys & Girls in 2012 to acclaim. The album had a hit single, “Hold On,” and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. After a long touring cycle, the band recorded their second record, Sound & Color, which was released in 2015 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and won four Grammy Awards.

So basically there are a few artist & groups who are still out here making traditional music and keeping the spirit of our legends alive today. Yes most of them are underrated or underground but at least they are out here and are way better then modern R&B, rock ‘n roll, jazz & funk on the charts today. Most of these acts are bringing the live bands back in black music & really inventing new ways to bring back the sounds of our legends.